DirectStorage Causes 10% Performance Hit On RTX 4090 In Forspoken

Mega6

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4090 takes a hit on DirectStorage implementation, doesn't seem too significant but definitely registers.

DirectStorage Causes 10% Performance Hit On RTX 4090 In Forspoken

"Microsoft's DirectStorage technology has brought lightning-fast loading times to games. However, it would seem that not everything is sunshine and rainbows. DirectStorage may induce a slight performance loss, according to the latest test by the German publication PC Games Hardware (opens in new tab).

DirectStorage 1.1 moves game asset decompression from the processor to the graphics card. Microsoft's demo showed that scenes load almost 3X faster on a graphics card than the processor. Of course, your mileage will vary and depend hugely on your hardware. Nevertheless, it's an exciting technology that will make loading screens a thing of the past. While many news outlets are focusing on benchmarking the impact of DirectStorage on loading times, PC Games Hardware took it a step further and measured the effect that Microsoft's technology has on frame rates.

Forspoken, from Square Enix, is the first game to leverage DirectStorage, the foundation for PC Games Hardware's tests. The publication's system consisted of a Core i9-12900K (Alder Lake) processor and a GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, at 4K. The reviewer tested with a SATA SSD and two M.2 SSD but didn't mention the exact models."
 
I am bit surprised just how poor the coverage seem to be around this, could be wanting to be in a video format that make it so it take a lot of times or games issues that make it act differently from PC to PC, the article does not even mention the impact on the load time, other articles-peoples said that Forspoken was not using GPU decompression but the earlier directstorage solution without it.

It is all over the place, why having used the GPU decompression during the loading of a scene would result in lesser FPS during gameplay ?

This article also:
https://wccftech.com/forspoken-pc-b...-load-times-for-the-first-directstorage-game/

No with-without numbers and say: Still, it's not entirely surprising. Forspoken PC does not seem to take advantage of the latest version of DirectStorage (1.1), which adds GPU decompression like RTX IO,
 
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I am bit surprised just how poor the coverage seem to be around this, could be wanting to be in a video format that make it so it take a lot of times or games issues that make it act differently from PC to PC, the article does not even mention the impact on the load time, other articles-peoples said that Forspoken was not using GPU decompression but the earlier directstorage solution without it.

It is all over the place, why having used the GPU decompression during the loading of a scene would result in lesser FPS during gameplay ?

This article also:
https://wccftech.com/forspoken-pc-b...-load-times-for-the-first-directstorage-game/

No with-without numbers and say: Still, it's not entirely surprising. Forspoken PC does not seem to take advantage of the latest version of DirectStorage (1.1), which adds GPU decompression like RTX IO,
There’s probably a game data streaming aspect to this - the work done during the loading screen itself may only open file descriptors and do some preload to start the scene asap.
 
Forspoken is using a game engine that is 7 years old and has not aged well, It is not using the current DX12 build, not using the most recent direct storage versions, and it is using an old version of the Agility SDK so it can maintain backward compatibility with Windows 10 versions older than 2019 which is going to cause more problems as Agility works as a middle layer and using old versions of it is known to break features DX12 if you don't have the builds lined up.
The game is just a mess, and both Luminous and Square should be ashamed to charge $100 CAD for this title, I am super glad I stuck to my no-preorders rule and did not get it because my friends who did are pissed, and incredibly butt hurt over it, the good news for me though is it brought them back to Darktide in the meantime so I have my crew back again, and that just makes that smooth, so... Good job Square, you released a product that makes Darktide look polished in comparison.
Rise of Rasalhague DLC for MW5:mercs also launched so we've got stuff to do in the mean time while Forspoken gets cleaned up.
 
Forspoken is using a game engine that is 7 years old and has not aged well, It is not using the current DX12 build, not using the most recent direct storage versions, and it is using an old version of the Agility SDK so it can maintain backward compatibility with Windows 10 versions older than 2019 which is going to cause more problems as Agility works as a middle layer and using old versions of it is known to break features DX12 if you don't have the builds lined up.
The game is just a mess, and both Luminous and Square should be ashamed to charge $100 CAD for this title, I am super glad I stuck to my no-preorders rule and did not get it because my friends who did are pissed, and incredibly butt hurt over it, the good news for me though is it brought them back to Darktide in the meantime so I have my crew back again, and that just makes that smooth, so... Good job Square, you released a product that makes Darktide look polished in comparison.
Rise of Rasalhague DLC for MW5:mercs also launched so we've got stuff to do in the mean time while Forspoken gets cleaned up.
SE has no shame lol. All they care about is the bottom dollar. Remember SE president said in his yearly letter to inverters that people don't play games to have fun.
 
There’s probably a game data streaming aspect to this - the work done during the loading screen itself may only open file descriptors and do some preload to start the scene asap.
I doubt it, could be made up video (but that would be significant work to make up) but that person:



Virtual same FPS, much faster load time (but it is not that faster that it would require to skip or some new tech that would be able to not have already in RAM what we see on screen at least from what they talked about back in the days), I am not even sure it use GPU decompression at all.

Those under 2 even 0.5s loading time would be much more in line with the company claims or the PS5 version than the german video and 4x-5x time faster or more than an regular 860 qvo sata SSD (which is also taken advantage of a game made to open fast and using DS), that finally taken advantage of the giant sequential read speed.
 
So this is going to end up like pretty much every other technology that's supposed to improve PC gaming such as hags, resizable bar, and game mode all of which can cause performance issues instead of improvements. And that's not even get into HDR implementation and stuttering unreal engine on PC. I'm sorry but PC gaming just becomes a more overpriced shit show with each passing year.
 
So this is going to end up like pretty much every other technology that's supposed to improve PC gaming such as hags, resizable bar, and game mode all of which can cause performance issues instead of improvements. And that's not even get into HDR implementation and stuttering unreal engine on PC. I'm sorry but PC gaming just becomes a more overpriced shit show with each passing year.
I guess that's the pit fall of having most of these developments primarily on consoles. They tend to be tailored to a very narrow set of hardware that rarely gets upgraded. I do, however, fully believe that the game developers should be putting more effort into properly supporting these technologies. HDR for instance is a shit show most of the time, but when the developer putting in the time to properly implement it, it can be absolutely stunning. Destiny 2 is a prime example of proper HDR implementation.
 
According to a reddit poster the explanation apparently would simply be:
It turns out there's a black loading screen that has very high fps, and since the loading screen is longer on a sata ssd, the "average fps" is higher on a sata ssd at the end of the test.
 
This entire game I just hear things of 'ugh"

So maybe let's wait to see a properly developed title with Direct Storage IMO
 
This entire game I just hear things of 'ugh"

So maybe let's wait to see a properly developed title with Direct Storage IMO
It always seems to be the case with new tech: Some dev will rush to support it, for whatever reason. Maybe bragging rights, maybe marketing, whatever. It ends up sucking. People will then use this as PROOF that $newtechnology sucks and we should never use it. Then as time goes on, people will use it properly, and we see it gain widespread adoption and become very useful.

DX10 was like that. The first couple games that added support for it were useless. They ran slower in DX10 mode, added like 1 effect and often that same effect could be hacked in to the DX9 version. But then as time went on, things got properly developed for it, and then DX11, and games started looking better and being able to do new shit because of the new tech.

I imagine this will be similar. It'll take awhile for games to properly support it and see a benefit from it.
 
I would have liked to see how other video cards handled it. Without that its not saying much.
 
I would have liked to see how other video cards handled it. Without that its not saying much.
Or any card did actual handle it.


According to a reddit poster the explanation apparently would simply be:
It turns out there's a black loading screen that has very high fps, and since the loading screen is longer on a sata ssd, the "average fps" is higher on a sata ssd at the end of the test.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23574016/microsoft-directstorage-forspoken-rtx-4090-benchmarks

It appears that PC Games Hardware used CapFrameX to measure performance, a capture and analysis tool based on Intel’s PresentMon. While it’s a popular app used for PC benchmarks, the loading sequences inside Forspoken’s benchmark cause blackscreens with high frame rates that can impact the overall average frame rate.

The game does not seem to use GPU decompression on PC to start with (and even if it did, it is really strange that it would have any impact on performance they way the game is made).

That the interesting part:
BenchmarkDirectStorage on (seconds)DirectStorage off (seconds)Difference
Forspoken scene 10.4720.90747.96%
Forspoken scene 21.9872.1487.50%
Forspoken scene 31.772.7435.40%
Forspoken scene 40.8961.68946.95%
Forspoken scene 50.8661.39237.79%
Forspoken scene 60.7461.0730.28%
Forspoken scene 70.8391.71250.99%

Finally and I can imagine even without DS on, just the way the game was designed with large reading speed in mind, the difference between an regular SATA SSD and a Samsung 990 pro will be huge.
 
Another one to add to the pile that there is literally no difference in actual performance.
https://www.pcgamer.com/forspoken-d...-theres-no-gpu-performance-hit-on-an-rtx-4090
Those benchmark seem to show 2 things
Giant difference between SATA 6 GBPS and PCIe 3.0

Almost nill between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0, which was quite expected with everything we saw, any talk of PCIe 4.0 being significantly better (let alone needed) in a mid future is still quite theoretical.

Going from 9.8s to 2.2s for something could be a bit like going from HDD to SSD was in term of ratio, which would be amazing
 
Good thing this game is getting shit reviews.
Wont have to worry about it.
 
It always seems to be the case with new tech: Some dev will rush to support it, for whatever reason. Maybe bragging rights, maybe marketing, whatever. It ends up sucking. People will then use this as PROOF that $newtechnology sucks and we should never use it. Then as time goes on, people will use it properly, and we see it gain widespread adoption and become very useful.

DX10 was like that. The first couple games that added support for it were useless. They ran slower in DX10 mode, added like 1 effect and often that same effect could be hacked in to the DX9 version. But then as time went on, things got properly developed for it, and then DX11, and games started looking better and being able to do new shit because of the new tech.

I imagine this will be similar. It'll take awhile for games to properly support it and see a benefit from it.
I could be mistaken but wasn't assassin creed 1 on pc able to use dx10?
 
I could be mistaken but wasn't assassin creed 1 on pc able to use dx10?
It used 10.1, but it skipped a render pass that I guess they never were able to fix, so they removed it in a patch. The skipped render pass is way it ran faster than DX9.
 
Those benchmark seem to show 2 things
Giant difference between SATA 6 GBPS and PCIe 3.0

Almost nill between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0, which was quite expected with everything we saw, any talk of PCIe 4.0 being significantly better (let alone needed) in a mid future is still quite theoretical.

Going from 9.8s to 2.2s for something could be a bit like going from HDD to SSD was in term of ratio, which would be amazing
The big difference between PCIe3 and 4 for the NVME drives has less to do with throughput, because while on paper the numbers are vastly different, in real usage the difference is marginal. Where the big difference comes in is with the NVME controllers, the controllers used on most 3.0 devices don't include a lot of the optional parts of the standards, whereas even the cheapest of the 4.0 controllers do. Those optional features have a pretty big impact on how Direct Storage, RTXIO, and AMD Smart Access Memory function. So if you are using a higher-end NVME drive of class 35 or better chances are you aren't going to see a practical difference between the two as the other parts of your system are going to be the limiting factors, but if you are using a cheaper NVME drive of class 10-30 of PCIe3 and comparing it to the same class on PCIe4 you are going to see a more noticeable impact, but you could also see cases where a top end PCIe3 controller still outperforms a budget PCIe4 one, it gets fun like that.
 
Good thing this game is getting shit reviews.
Wont have to worry about it.
I don't know if it's a "Good thing" but it is certainly a thing, but the hate it is receiving is certainly not misplaced. Really hoping they get some patches out soon to fix it up, but not too soon, because then I lose the guys I am playing Darktide with and it is less fun playing with randoms, the rounds are too short to figure out how they are going to play and it makes positioning harder than I have to think and not just shoot stuff, and I don't want to have to think when playing games, the games are meant to turn my brain off.
 
I don't know if it's a "Good thing" but it is certainly a thing, but the hate it is receiving is certainly not misplaced. Really hoping they get some patches out soon to fix it up, but not too soon, because then I lose the guys I am playing Darktide with and it is less fun playing with randoms, the rounds are too short to figure out how they are going to play and it makes positioning harder than I have to think and not just shoot stuff, and I don't want to have to think when playing games, the games are meant to turn my brain off.
Yeah, had it on my list, but have held off to see if its improved.
 
Yeah, had it on my list, but have held off to see if its improved.
Same but $100 CAD is a tough pill to swallow when there are other games out there bidding for my time. So I will watch it, but I could also give the Dragon Age series a new play through, it's been a long ass time since I last played those, and I wonder how it's held up.
 
Same but $100 CAD is a tough pill to swallow when there are other games out there bidding for my time. So I will watch it, but I could also give the Dragon Age series a new play through, it's been a long ass time since I last played those, and I wonder how it's held up.
There's a lot of mods that make da3 look quite nice
 
if you follow the link in the original post, there was an update

Update 01/27/2022 6:30 pm PT


PC Games Hardware has retracted the original claim that DirectStorage affects frame rates. The outlet used CapFrameX, a utility based on Intel PresentMon, to record the frame rates. Unfortunately, the publication didn't consider that the Forspoken benchmark contains black screens with high FPS that affect the average frame rate.

Logically, the SATA SSD took longer to load than the M.2 SSDs, resulting in higher overall frame rates. So while the data was accurate, the conclusion was wrong. PC Games Hardware has issued the following statement(opens in new tab) (machine translation) on its YouTube channel:
 
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