New DirectStorage 1.2 comes from Microsoft for faster loading times for PC games – Windows 11

While DirectStorage originally started as a way to stream data from the latest NVMe SSD to your GPU without processor involvement, Microsoft has listened to developer feedback that improving support for older hard drives would also benefit gaming performance.

Parts of DirectStorage have always worked on classic hard drives, but developers have had to use separate methods for NVMe hardware and hard drives. This complicates the process of supporting an API already designed for high-speed SSDs that PC gamers don’t always use to store and play games.

With DirectStorage 1.2, developers can now use the same code on both SSDs and hard drives. While DirectStorage traditionally used non-buffered mode to transfer data from SSDs to the GPU as quickly as possible, it now supports buffered mode for older hard drives.

“Older hard drives require a buffer for data entry in order to accommodate long seek times,” says Microsoft’s DirectX team. Developers will now be able to enable this feature for games that are installed hard on slower hard drives so they can take advantage of the operating system’s file caching features and speed boost.

Microsoft is also improving texture GPU decompression to make it faster in DirectStorage 1.2. GPU decompression originally appeared in DirectStorage 1.1 late last year and allows games to offload the workload required to decompress game data to the graphics card instead of the CPU.

The new DirectStorage changes are certainly encouraging, but we’re still waiting to see games adopt them. So far, Forspoken has only added DirectStorage support during their website as well the edgeMicrosoft’s technology has been found to improve load times by about 30% or more. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are all set to support the latest DirectStorage GPU decompression technology, so it’s only a matter of time before we see more game makers support the technology now that it more clearly benefits older hard drives.