Review Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G SSD Review: A DirectStorage Gaming Drive for Tomorrow

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"questionable how useful DirectStorage will be"

As end-user I know so far only that Win11 is recommended for DirectStorage (it is compatible with Win10, but Win11 has the latest storage optimizations build in - according to the dev blog). And the big feature is the GPU decompression, which they say can speed up loading by nearly 3x when the CPU is a bottleneck. But so far I haven't seen any info about what CPU they used - e.g. the screenshot on the dev blog just says "100% Max CPU usage" for the part without GPU decompression. What about latest CPUs though? Will a system with a new CPU still have some use for DirectStorage, or can the CPU actually handle it without?

On the other hand, that part could be tested already. Like when someone happens to have a rig with a top-performing CPU, does that CPU hit 100% usage when loading a game? If so, then one could argue that (even) a high-end system may benefit from DirectStorage - based on the info provided so far.

For me, who is likely to get one of these 4.0 SSDs, it would still leave a question though, of whether a NVMe SSD with firmware designed for DirectStorage gives that much a boost that it would be at least on par with a bit faster NVMe SSD in regard to game loading.
 
Allow me to be sceptical of "DirectStorage", or rather Microsoft its claims.

The latest consoles have "DirectStorage". There might be some differences (consoles use shared memory), but overall it's quite similar tech to that coming to PC.

It allows system memory to bypass CPU overhead, and allows the GPU's parallel processing prowess to be used for texture decompression.

Yet loading speeds on consoles are not noticeably faster than on PC. The excuse so far has been that developers need to implement it. Yet if it was as straightforward to implement as claimed, where are all these titles on consoles with "almost instant loading time". Either DirectStorage is overrated, or implementing it seems so complex that developers aren't actually adding support to games.
 
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The other issue is that some games don't dedicate enough CPU threads to decompression. So a 6 core or 16 core might only still use 2 threads to decompress assets. A dev now COULD really speed up loading, but many of them don't see it as a priority. When DirectStorage finally get FULLY released, it should be easy for devs to implement it in their games.
 
USAFRet said:
Until we see the hardware in the wild, with applications actually created to take advantage of this DirectStorage....all is speculation.
Click to expand...
That's the thing about being fully confident and having the full support to back it up to prove your claim (on release by having some titles ready to go when DS1.1 launches, not weeks/months later, to show off its prowess, and not the arrogant... "take a look at our skids and just take our word for it" nonsense) on day-0 of its deployment, especially knowing that MS has a very bad track record for under delivering on their promises. e.g. Game Mode, HAGS, Mesh Shader, etc.
 
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This technology is being used right now with the PS5 and Xbox whatever it's called... Sony doesn't really specify much more than just a sequential speed rating.
 
Like all new features, this will take time to be used in multiple applications. Games and other programs will be developed normal SSD as a target. Eventually there will be more and more programs that really would benefit from this feature. But it will take time, most likely years until this is feature you need, instead of nice to have.
 
I'm hoping its an issue of they know no PC currently can use the feature so they don't bother implementing it on any crossplatform game that will run on PC.
 
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