Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology finally debuted with the release of Forspoken on PC, but you might not want to use it. According to some preliminary testing, DirectStorage causes upwards of a 10% drop in your average frame rate.
If you’re unfamiliar with DirectStorage, it uses some GPU power to decompress game assets, vastly improving loading times. PC Games Hardware showed the power of the tech, with the PCIe 4.0 SSD loading the game’s benchmark in a second and a half. By comparison, the SATA SSD took almost three and a half seconds to load.
The trade-off is that your GPU takes a hit. A 10% drop is nothing to sneeze at, even if it only represents eight frames in the game. It’s important to remember that PC Games Hardware tested Forspoken with the RTX 4090, as well, which is by far the most powerful GPU on the market. Less powerful graphics cards may see a larger performance impact.
No, the test was not done correctly.