Microsoft DirectStorage SDK finally hits PCs

Microsoft has added DirectStorage to Windows. This new DirectX 12 Ultimate API promises future video games will be able to feature more detailed worlds, with better textures and draw distances. DirectStorage aims to significantly cut loading times and Microsoft's public SDK is offered for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

DirectStorage requires a PC with NVMe PCIe 3.0 or later and an NVIDIA RTX 2000 or AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPU or later. At the moment, there are no video games that support DirectStorage. We do have confirmation that Forspoken will support it -- this game is scheduled for an October 11 release.

We can expect to see more games implement the feature. Sony has already promoted what a speedy NVMe SSD can do for gaming through the fast-loading universe-hopping in the PlayStation 5's Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. However, not all PC gamers have moved from SATA to NVMe PCIe 3.0 or later SSDs. Microsoft previously said NVMe was necessary because such SSDs "can have multiple queues, and each queue can contain many requests at a time, making [them] a good fit for today's gaming workloads that tend to be parallel and batched."

Via: ARS Technica