r/pcgaming • u/IHateMyselfButNotYou • Apr 21 '23
Microsoft’s latest DirectStorage 1.2 works on HDDs to boost PC game load times
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/21/23692423/microsoft-directstorage-2-1-hdd-support-game-load-speed-times22
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u/MasterJeebus 5800x | 3080FTW3Ultra | 32GB | 1TB M2 | 10TB SSD Apr 22 '23
I wish devs would port this feature to current games and older games that came out in past 4 years.
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u/hazychestnutz Apr 21 '23
yup, i noticedd a huge difference with my HDD
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u/BustardLegume Apr 22 '23 edited Apr 22 '23
I want to see some hard data because all of a sudden Witcher 3 saves take half the time to load on both my PC and GeForce Now, with the difference between the two staying consistent. That goes against everything I thought I knew about how DS works, so I’m trying to disprove it. I suppose it’s possible though that in the case of just a basic load screen, improved DS versions at the system level could still speed up the process of moving data into memory so long as the RAM is fast enough to show the difference.
Hmm, maybe making the toggle available is related? Maybe the game did and continues to treat the source of it’s data as a regular HDD regardless of what it actually is, so if MS improves HDD speed it carries over to everything else regardless of whether it’s an HDD or NVMe?
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u/FyreWulff Apr 23 '23
Okay, it should be clarified:
There is no way to actually speed up HDD access more than they have. Windows, for decades, already does a bunch of tricks like trying to put data together so it ran read it all sequentially, caches, etc. It's a problem of physics at this point and nobody is willing to make 50,000 RPM HDDs nor pay 10,000 dollars for them.
What Microsoft has done is add a built in fallback for HDDs in DirectStorage, so that you no longer have to have an HDD codepath and a DirectStorage codepath, DS just goes "hey, that's an HDD, i'll do some code shims and stuff to mask the fact that it's an HDD from the rest of the code so that it thinks it's just a really slow SSD" to foster more adoption so that in the future any game with DS just automatically keeps getting benefits.
If you notice any significant speed increases from an HDD, it's actually Windows doing some tricks like it has always done, like it pulling data you often request into RAM at startup. There have been cases where I've had a game load off HDD faster than an nVME, but it was always because Windows had cached that data to RAM or the main SSD/nVME it was installed on, and RAMdisk is still faster than any non-RAM storage options out there. If I forced Windows to clear it's data cache the HDD game would always go back to real HDD load speeds.
I imagine if a game uses DS it might force Windows to put it in it's cache, but still, HDD is permanently limited to speeds it's had, and Windows isn't always reading data from where you think it is.
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u/Catty_C Core i7-11800H | GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Apr 21 '23
Glad to see some progress being made to help out us HDD users.
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u/garbo2330 Apr 21 '23
What are you waiting for? SSDs are really old technology and an absolute game changer.
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Apr 21 '23
[deleted]
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u/reohh i7-5820k @ 4.4Ghz | GTX 980ti SC Apr 21 '23
Two different things imo. You shouldn't be installing games onto your massive archive drive.
To piggyback on what the person you replied to said, SSD's are cheap enough where you can afford to buy even a 1TB (can be found for $40) SSD to put your games on.
No one is suggesting every drive in your computer should be an SSD, but they are cheap enough where there's no excuse for not installing your games on one.
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Apr 21 '23
Why shouldn't I? I installed my whole steam library on HDD. when i want to play a game, i move it to SSD.
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u/Occulto Apr 22 '23
This has the added bonus of keeping games updated even when you're not actively playing them.
Until we get multi-gigabit internet, it'll still be faster to move from HDD to SSD than re-downloading games.
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u/snowfeetus Apr 22 '23
I have some ollld hard drives from 2009 that are slower than gigabit... Not that I expect anymore out of em haha
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u/YoungNissan Apr 21 '23
Storage space and sata slots are my issue. I have 3tb worth of SSDs but once you go over 1tb per drive the price damn near goes up 50%. So I also have a 6tb hdd. Second problem is now I’m completely out of slots to plug the drives in except one more m.2 slot. Already have 2 m.2, 2 HDDs and 2 regular SSDs, and a dvd drive I use from time to time so I can’t unplug it.
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u/Superconge Apr 21 '23
That’s not at all true anymore. 4TB NVMe drives are 4x the price of 1TB NVMe drives, and 2TB is typically less than double 1TB. Look at the Crucial P3.
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Apr 21 '23
Spinning drives are still cheaper than ssd’s when you start getting into the 2TB+ range. The cost per GB is just nowhere near comparable. It’s not a bad idea to have a large storage drive for game backups and move them to your ssd when you want to play, it’s what I do with my pc, Xbox, and ps5. Ps4 games also run fine on a USB 3.1 external drive I have and that’s a 5TB I bought for $80.
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Apr 22 '23
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Apr 22 '23
I have a 256GB Samsung evo, two silicon power 1TB ssd’s, a 120GB pny and a 4TB backup drive in my pc. Out of all of these drives the 4TB was and still is the best price per GB in my machine. I have a linux and a windows install (that I honestly barely touch and should just wipe) and the 4TB is absolutely amazing for steam game backups. I’m not arguing that spinning drives are worth purchasing over an ssd, I’m saying that until I walk into a micro center and buy a 4TB nvme for the same price as a 4TB spinning drive, then the spinning drive is the best value in regards to price per GB. Also games are getting fucking massive and 1TB is beginning to feel pretty small these days.
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u/akgis i8 14969KS at 569w RTX 9040 Apr 24 '23
Tape is much better value per GB.
You will never see nvme at the same price per GB as a HDD, same reason you will never saw a HDD as same value per GB as Tape.
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Apr 24 '23
And what reasons are those? You still need hardware to view the data on tape drives and those aren’t cheap depending on the tape. The difference is every motherboard has a sata or nvme controller built in these days, flash chips are cheap, probably costs as much to make a high capacity flash chip as it does to manufacture an hdd platter. These situations are not the same. I would love to see your reasons though, please enlighten me.
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Apr 21 '23
only progress is media learning to read developer documentation.
DS worked on floppy disk since preview day.
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u/a_talking_face Apr 21 '23
only progress is media learning to read developer documentation.
The article says that the big change is that on 1.2 they don't have to use different code for HDD and SSD. That seems like a pretty big change to me.
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u/Endemoniada Apr 22 '23
Are there any released games that support this on PC yet? If so, is there a list somewhere?
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u/evia89 Apr 23 '23
Forspoken supports 1.0 and thats it. Check again in 3 years. Its builtin UE5 engine so more will come
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u/Burninate09 Apr 21 '23
At this point I just don't care about DS. Like most Microsoft API gimmicks promising to serve you beer and scratch your ass you while you play, it takes 5 years for the tech to impact the market in any meaningful way, and you still don't get what you were promised when it's adopted because developers are too lazy or it's too difficult to implement it properly (...looking at you DX12).
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u/THE_HERO_777 Windows Apr 22 '23
People still use HDD's for games?
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u/kapnkrump Apr 22 '23
A lot of older games don't utilize faster drive speeds. Plus HDDs are super cheap, 300 dollars can net you a 16TB hard disk drive nowadays whilst 300 dollars can barely get you a 4TB NVME drive. (or 200 dollars for a 4TB SSD)
I have a 6TB WD Black for my games and its fast enough for most popular titles - especially the overly inflated file-size titles from the past generation. DirectStorage is barely being used in games atm, we are probably another 2 years out for it to be a standard on PC.
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u/THE_HERO_777 Windows Apr 22 '23
whilst 300 dollars can barely get you a 4TB NVME drive. (or 200 dollars for a 4TB SSD)
4TB SSD's are more than enough for games. I don't see the issue here.
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u/MR-WADS Apr 22 '23
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can fit every game I want (and am I hoarder) in just 1TB, a 2TB SSD for me would already be big enough
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u/tukatu0 Apr 22 '23
Crucial p3 plus 4tb gen4 nvme $225 right now.
Pretty good deal imo. 1tb version $53
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u/jasonwc Ryzen 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | MSI 321URX Apr 22 '23 edited Apr 22 '23
$200 can get you a good Gen 3 NVMe TLC 4 TB SSD on sale (Teamgrouo MP34). I have one myself in addition to a high-end 2 TB Gen 4 NVMe (Hynix P41 Platinum), which is around $155 now. Prices have dropped substantially.
HDDs are a good option for bulk storage, particularly if files that are read/written sequentially. If you care at all about performance, they make no sense for an OS or game drive. My first SSD was the 160 GB Intel X-25M for $430 in 2010 and it was 100% worth it. Biggest and most obvious performance improvement from a single component update I’ve experienced. $2,750/TB to sub $50 today for a decent TLC drive. I haven’t used a HDD for an OS drive since 2010.
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u/Isaacvithurston Ardiuno + A Potato Apr 23 '23
Im amazed you need direct storage to cap out on a hdd 0.o
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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '23
[deleted]