Revolutionizing PC Performance: How Windows 10/11 is Enhancing User Experience on Slower Hard Drives
Available on Microsoft’s new generation of consoles, the Xbox Series X|S, but also on Windows 10 and 11, DirectStorage technology increases device performance in games. It notably exploits the power of GPUs and the performance of NVMe SSDs. Furthermore, thanks to a data decompression system performed by the GPU instead of the CPU, Windows 11 benefits from better loading times in games.
Now, a new edition of the DirectStorage API has been released: if version 1.2 fixes some bugs, it also mainly benefits from a great new feature. So Microsoft programmers took into account the I/O buffer on hard disks. Typically, dedicated video, keyboard, or mouse drivers require buffered I/O.” As a result, reduced load times and higher levels of detail are no longer dedicated to SSDs.
According to Microsoft on Windows 10 and 11, “DirectStorage currently opens files in unbuffered mode. This helps to avoid unnecessary copying, getting data to the GPU as quickly as possible. However, some programmers said that they would like to be able to use the same code on both high-speed SSDs and regular HDDs. Conventional hard drives require buffered I/O to mask long seek times.
While it’s still preferable to use an NVMe SSD for maximum performance in Windows and your games, the new version of DirectStorage takes advantage of traditional mechanical hard drives. This is good news if you don’t want to invest in an SSD, which is necessarily more expensive than a conventional hard drive with equivalent storage capacities.
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