PC 20-40% reduction of CPU usage under Direct Storage - Microsoft

[Mr.Vic20]

DirectStorage Brings 20-40% CPU Savings to Begin With, Says Microsoft

WCCFTECH.COM

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Microsoft Software Engineer Cooper Partin talked at GDC 2022 about the significant CPU savings that the DirectStorage API can bring to games.

Interesting if true! As always though, real world performance tell the whole story and we won't know that until Oct 11th. 

[Zaku3]

Don't games need to be developed with this in mind.

[Mr.Vic20]

8 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

Don't games need to be developed with this in mind.

Yes games need to choose to use this API, I'm not clear on the design requirements though. First game (on PC anyway) will be "Forspoken" from SE. 

[Xbob42]

This and RTX IO should be a niiiice bump.

[Keyser_Soze]

7 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Interesting if true! As always though, real world performance tell the whole story and we won't know that until Oct 11th. 

 

That's right around the corner!

 

[imthesoldier]

19 hours ago, Zaku3 said:

Don't games need to be developed with this in mind.

 

I think existing games could also be patched to take advantage of it, but it likely wouldn't be the same as a game built from the ground up with it. That'd especially be the case if developers design their game without elevators, or long corridors to hide streaming assets.

 

Either way, a 20-40% reduction in CPU usage is significant enough to the point where 6-Cores, let alone 4-core CPUs, might still be the standard for many more years to come.

[TwinIon]

Seems great and I hope to see it in a bunch of games, but I won't hold my breath for significant adoption anytime soon. It also requires an M.2 SSD, which is increasingly standard, but I'd guess far from universal.

 

 

I'm curious as to how much of a hit this is to the GPU. Given how many games are GPU limited on the PC, I'd be slightly concerned that moving more work to the GPU would be less than ideal. During initial loads that's obviously not a problem.

 

 

52 minutes ago, imthesoldier said:

Either way, a 20-40% reduction in CPU usage is significant enough to the point where 6-Cores, let alone 4-core CPUs, might still be the standard for many more years to come.

I don't think that was in danger of changing much either way. Games haven't exactly been great at optimizing for all the many threads that have been available for years now.

[Spork3245]

21 hours ago, TwinIon said:

Seems great and I hope to see it in a bunch of games, but I won't hold my breath for significant adoption anytime soon. It also requires an M.2 SSD, which is increasingly standard, but I'd guess far from universal.

 

 

I'm curious as to how much of a hit this is to the GPU. Given how many games are GPU limited on the PC, I'd be slightly concerned that moving more work to the GPU would be less than ideal. During initial loads that's obviously not a problem.

 

 

I don't think that was in danger of changing much either way. Games haven't exactly been great at optimizing for all the many threads that have been available for years now.

 

I don't think it adds more work to the GPU, it just eliminates the middle man of the CPU and system RAM to load data onto the GPU, so there's not actually more work being done on the GPU, just reducing time of loading data + removing CPU load.

[imthesoldier]

On 3/29/2022 at 12:18 PM, TwinIon said:

Seems great and I hope to see it in a bunch of games, but I won't hold my breath for significant adoption anytime soon. It also requires an M.2 SSD, which is increasingly standard, but I'd guess far from universal.

 

 

I'm curious as to how much of a hit this is to the GPU. Given how many games are GPU limited on the PC, I'd be slightly concerned that moving more work to the GPU would be less than ideal. During initial loads that's obviously not a problem.

 

 

I don't think that was in danger of changing much either way. Games haven't exactly been great at optimizing for all the many threads that have been available for years now.

 

I wouldn't say there was a danger either. The issue I think had more to do with as video games become more sophisticated, and require more resources, the liklihood of developers using more CPU cores starts to seem logical. But what we're also seeing is more and more hardware is being used to help accelerate functions that otherwise would be allocated for the CPU. The GPU itself over the years has already removed a ton of the work involving the CPU. With DirectStorage API now on the docket, you're removing even more of the overheard that CPU

 

That said, I think what might end up happening is evolving the CPU to handle a lot more IPCs instead of simply adding more and more cores. Case in point, you can still play modern games with CPUs over a decade old, and while performance is certainly limited, you play them relatively alright.

[TwinIon]

5 hours ago, Spork3245 said:

I don't think it adds more work to the GPU, it just eliminates the middle man of the CPU and system RAM to load data onto the GPU, so there's not actually more work being done on the GPU, just reducing time of loading data + removing CPU load.

 

Looks like I read the article incorrectly. This initial release of Direct Storage continues to use the CPU for decompression, but it still reduces CPU overhead. It's future releases that will allow for GPU decompression.

[Dre801]

What a time to be alive.

[cusideabelincoln]

Finally Ubisoft games can jump on that 120+ Hz train.

[Spork3245]

23 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Finally Ubisoft games can jump on that 120+ Hz train.

 

 

[imthesoldier]

1 hour ago, cusideabelincoln said:

Finally Ubisoft games can jump on that 120+ Hz train.

 

Nah, man. This'll be the secret sauce that finally brings GTAV into the next-gen. Coming in 2024, GTAV: Direct Edition made specifically for PC with DS in mind.