Microsoft has announced that the DirectStorage functionality will be made available on Windows 10 after all. Via a blog post on the official DirectX blog it was announced that a preview version of the technology is now available for game developers to try.
The game-oriented optimization between storage and video memory was previously planned for Windows 10. Since DirectStorage was unveiled as part of Windows 11, however, it has remained silent about compatibility with Windows 10. For a short time there was a chance that the technology would be exclusive for the newer operating system.
The DirectX team assures that DirectStorage is indeed compatible with Windows 10 — even for somewhat outdated storage, such as traditional hard drives. The advantages in loading speed do more justice to modern storage media (such as fast NVMe SSDs) with better stackstorage in the offing for Windows 11.
The preview version of DirectStorage on Windows 10 is currently available exclusively to game developers who have signed the embargo. Games must first be built on DirectStorage before end users can experience the storage optimization at all. For the time being, version 1909 of Windows 10 is required, as well as the DirectX 12 Agility SDK.
DirectStorage Is Essentially Xbox’s PC Downside Velocity Architecture. By smartly flowing compressed data to the video memory, games enjoy a faster pipeline between the components.
Only at the GPU level is the game data ‘unpacked’, so that, for example, the working memory and the central processor are loaded less heavily when loading new data. This also makes better use of the firm bandwidth of new video cards.
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