Adrenaline readers and gamers in general have heard a lot about Microsoft technologies: find out what it is and what the advantages of the technology are , a promising technology for the new generation of games based on optimizing storage usage. In this article, you will better understand how this feature will work on PC, what you need to take advantage of it and what its advantages are for the user experience.
How Microsoft technologies works windows🇧🇷
To better understand how Microsoft technologies works on your system, it’s important to first introduce how computers typically function without this technology:
In applications such as games, resource information comes from your storage space (HD or SSD ), is read by your processor and redirected to RAM memory, which then transfers this information back to the processor and finally, it is destined for the gpu which will process this information to load and display your game’s assets.
Microsoft technologies is enough to basically, skip these steps that pass information through the CPU and RAM and cause resources to be stored in your storage (which now benefits greatly from being on a high-speed SSD), communicate directly with the video card🇧🇷
The large and accelerating increase
Of SSDs in the market, including SSDs with ever faster communication interfaces (such as PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0), accompanies the need and implementation of Microsoft technologies. This is because since hard disk drives (HDs) have much slower transfer speeds, passing information through the CPU and through the memories did not affect the end result for asset loading as much. With newer SSDs, this process becomes a “bottleneck” for this communication.
Another very important factor to consider when implementing is that game files in general have their resources compressed to optimize space, which passing through the CPU has undergone decompression before being processed on the GPU. If this data no longer passes through the processor, you need to think of a way for the GPU to do this job of decompressing which is a challenge for entry into Windows technology, but more on that in the next few paragraphs.
But what are goods?
In the previous paragraphs it was very clear how to load the axes on the video card faster, but perhaps some readers are wondering what these important axes are. Well, they are basically elements that structure the game, like textures, character models and maps, even sound effects and lighting system.
Anyone who is a developer or follows indie game development to some degree should also acknowledge that it is even possible to buy some of these assets ready to add to your game.
Since all these elements must be loaded by the GPU to display the game and in more graphically complex games with these axes taking up more and more data, more efficient communication between the storage where this information is located and the GPU which will process this information to display the game, that’s just what Direct Storage is made of.
When will Microsoft technologies be available on Windows?
Is already a technology that exists and is also being implemented in games, but only for Xbox, with another essentially identical technology, but with a different name on PlayStation 5. Scorn, for example, was a game recently released for Xbox and PC, but what only received support for in its Xbox version.
Also Read About: THE BENEFITS OF LIFEGUARDING AND SWIMMING IN THE POOL
What are the requirements to take advantage of Direct Storage?
To take advantage of Microsoft technologies on your computer, you need to have a machine with some specific settings. Microsoft made a big deal when Windows 11 launched, and the OS specs already tell us what we need to know:
According to these updated specs, you must have an NVMe-based SSD installed to take advantage of direct storage. However, it’s worth mentioning that there was a period near the launch of Windows 11 where Microsoft listed a need for an SSD to have at least 1TB of storage space, which surprised some users. Nonetheless, Microsoft does not currently list this storage space as a requirement, which may indicate support for various SSD capacities, including smaller capacity models.
GPU usage for Microsoft technologies
Something that is not in the Windows 11 specification, but may help with the experience of using is an RTX video card, because Nvidia has long ago released its GPU file decompression technology, RTX IO, which optimizes further the communication speed of resources with the GPU.
It’s worth noting, however, that Nvidia isn’t the only one relying on this type of technology, as it’s essential for Direct Storage to function properly, but Nvidia is notable for announcing its technology well in advance.
As mentioned above, resources no longer pass through the processor, so it can no longer decompress these files, which is why the GPU ends up fulfilling this role. On PlayStation 5, for example, which has technology similar to Direct Storage, it has already been revealed that the GPU of the SOC has this important role in decompression🇧🇷
