$\"Corsair$ <\/p>\n

Image: Corsair \/ Amazon<\/span>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Microsoft\u2019s long-awaited (perhaps-revolutionary) DirectStorage technology finally arrived on the PC<\/a> this week in Forspoken<\/em>. Initial testing reports showed encouraging yet mildly perplexing results, with some sections of the game loading in under two seconds flat and continues from your last save point being virtually instantaneous. Yes please! But it appears there\u2019s a tradeoff: Your in-game frame rates decrease by about 10 percent.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the team at Germany\u2019s PC Games Hardware discovered while putting the Forspoken <\/em>benchmark through its paces at 4K resolution. The publication used a set testing rig consisting of a Core i9-12900K and Nvidia\u2019s ferocious GeForce RTX 4090<\/a>, then ran the benchmark from a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and finally a SATA SSD. The SATA SSD doesn\u2019t support DirectStorage, which requires an NVMe drive.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The end result? The SATA drive delivered the highest average frame rate to the tune of 83.2 frames-per-second. The NVMe drives each averaged roughly 75 fps, a significant 9.64 percent speed reduction. On the positive side, the 1 percent and 0.2 percent frame rates remained consistent across all three drives, so DirectStorage didn\u2019t affect <em>Forspoken<\/em>\u2019s moment-to-moment smoothness.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Update: <\/strong>There is speculation online that PC Games Hardware incorrectly used the third-party tool CapFrameX to , including the longer (and higher-performing) black loading screens for the SATA drive, which would obviously increase the overall frame rate for that setup. We\u2019ll update this report with more conclusive information when we receive it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>One of DirectStorage\u2019s key features is decompressing game assets on your graphics card rather than your processor, so it makes sense that overall performance is impacted in some way. Still, a 10 percent frame rate reduction is eye opening. That\u2019s roughly comparable to the jump between an RTX 3080 and 3090, though in real-world terms, the difference between the SATA setup and the NVMe setups were just 8 frames-per-second.<\/p>\n<p>These results aren\u2019t necessarily universal, however. The RTX 4090 is by <em>far<\/em> the most powerful graphics card on the market and PC Games Hardware only tested at 4K resolution. Performance scaling could change at lower resolutions or on different GPUs with different architectures and memory configurations. (Square Enix did not send out PC review copies, only PlayStation 5 codes, so PC publications are still scrambling to test the new technology.)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a bit of an open question if <em>Forspoken<\/em> is an appropriate champion for Microsoft\u2019s ultra-fast new storage tech. and agree that the game is a technical mess on the PC. With no other DirectStorage games to compare results to, who knows if it\u2019s working to its fullest abilities here?<\/p>\n<p>One thing seems clear, though. There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch. DirectStorage may drastically reduce loading times under the right circumstances, but offloading that work to the GPU has consequences elsewhere. It\u2019ll take a lot more testing (and games with DirectStorage support) to fully wrap our heads around everything Microsoft\u2019s forward-looking storage technology has to offer. There\u2019s a if you want to try it yourself!<\/p>\n<p><\/body><\/div>\n<div data-ga=\"article-footer-author\">\n<h3>\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/author\/bchacos\" rel=\"author\"><br \/>\n\t\tAuthor: Brad Chacos<\/a>, Executive editor\t\t<\/h3>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/author_photo_Brad-Chacos_1655490486-25.jpg?quality=50&strip=all&w=150&h=150&crop=1\" height=\"125\" width=\"125\">\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BradChacos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tweeting too much<\/a>. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and all manner of PC hardware.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BradChacos\" title=\"Twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><svg viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\"><path d=\"M459.37 151.716c.325 4.548.325 9.097.325 13.645 0 138.72-105.583 298.558-298.558 298.558-59.452 0-114.68-17.219-161.137-47.106 8.447.974 16.568 1.299 25.34 1.299 49.055 0 94.213-16.568 130.274-44.832-46.132-.975-84.792-31.188-98.112-72.772 6.498.974 12.995 1.624 19.818 1.624 9.421 0 18.843-1.3 27.614-3.573-48.081-9.747-84.143-51.98-84.143-102.985v-1.299c13.969 7.797 30.214 12.67 47.431 13.319-28.264-18.843-46.781-51.005-46.781-87.391 0-19.492 5.197-37.36 14.294-52.954 51.655 63.675 129.3 105.258 216.365 109.807-1.624-7.797-2.599-15.918-2.599-24.04 0-57.828 46.782-104.934 104.934-104.934 30.213 0 57.502 12.67 76.67 33.137 23.715-4.548 46.456-13.32 66.599-25.34-7.798 24.366-24.366 44.833-46.132 57.827 21.117-2.273 41.584-8.122 60.426-16.243-14.292 20.791-32.161 39.308-52.628 54.253z\" \/><\/svg><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/brad.chacos\" title=\"Facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><svg viewBox=\"0 0 512 512\"><path d=\"M504 256C504 119 393 8 256 8S8 119 8 256c0 123.78 90.69 226.38 209.25 245V327.69h-63V256h63v-54.64c0-62.15 37-96.48 93.67-96.48 27.14 0 55.52 4.84 55.52 4.84v61h-31.28c-30.8 0-40.41 19.12-40.41 38.73V256h68.78l-11 71.69h-57.78V501C413.31 482.38 504 379.78 504 256z\" \/><\/svg><\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/1485079\/microsoft-directstorage-slashes-the-rtx-4090s-speed-by-10-in-forspoken.html\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><br \/>\n Rubi Roberie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Corsair \/ Amazon Microsoft\u2019s long-awaited (perhaps-revolutionary) DirectStorage technology finally arrived on the PC this week in Forspoken. Initial testing reports showed encouraging yet mildly perplexing results, with some sections of the game loading in under two seconds flat and continues from your last save point being virtually instantaneous. Yes please! But it appears there\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":601806,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54307,78,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-601805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-directstorage","8":"category-microsoft","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}