Microsoft brings Xbox Series X fast charging technology to Windows games

Microsoft gives game developers Access to the public DirectStorage APIIt is a technology by which games can be loaded directly from an SSD to a GPU. The technology has been available for these consoles since the release of the Xbox Series X and S. The proprietary charging technology is now also available for PC games on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. The ball is finally with developers to use the Microsoft SDK in their games.

Usually the game loads files with parts of the game like texture, audio, and animation to RAM, after which the CPU decompresses these compressed files and then forwards them to the GPU. This is because GPUs are not good at decrypting files. Microsoft’s DirectStorage API makes it possible to extract files using the GPU, bypassing the bottleneck (potentially overloaded CPU).

At the same time, the technology in question uses modern nvme storage. This SSD technology has a bandwidth of several gigabits per second. This is while games should also take into account older systems that can only process a few hundred megabytes per second. Therefore, games are often not optimized to take full advantage of the advantages of fast storage space.

Microsoft states that all forms of storage can benefit from DirectStorage, but the best result requires pcie 4.0 nvme-ssd and Windows 11.

source:
Microsoft