Improving performance in games is often not just about having a more powerful graphics card or a better processor, and proof of this is the latest Windows 11 update that Microsoft has released, thanks to which times are reduced less than half the load in some games and, in addition, it significantly reduces the CPU load in many others, notably improving not only performance, but above all reducing loading times and improving the gaming experience.
The technology surely sounds familiar to you Direct storage which has been with us since March and was officially updated to version 1.1 today. DirectStorage allows graphics card shaders to directly access your NVMe-SSD without having to go through CPU processing, which means it speeds up loading in games, reduces CPU load, and allows the GPU to handle it directly, thereby improving performance. This is of course a WIN-WIN technology for gamers.
Update Windows 11 and improve gaming performance
With DirectStorage 1.1, Microsoft has released a comparison to see what we can achieve with this Windows 11 update in games. In the previous example, it took 2.36 seconds to load 5.65 GB of game resources, with the CPU at 100% capacity, running at its maximum. Now, with DirectStorage 1.1, it only takes 0.8 seconds to load the same resources, while the CPU has been kept at 15% maximum load, reducing not only the loading time, but also the consumption and temperature of the processor and at the same time improving performance in the game, since the graphics card can manage the resources taken directly from the SSD without having to go through the CPU.
Starting today, DirectStorage 1.1 is now available for developers and it supports drivers from all three major graphics card manufacturers, namely NVIDIA, AMD, and even Intel. In the case of Nvidiaclarified that GeForce drivers 526.47 and later will be required for this to work, while for Intel They also specified that we will need drivers 31.0.101.3793 and later. In the case of AMDMicrosoft hasn’t specified which drivers this is compatible with, but it’s understood we’ll need to update them.
Does that mean you have to be a developer to access these features? No way. This means that developers need to update their Insider build to be able to implement this feature in their games, but we as users just need to make sure that we have updated graphics card drivers, as well as the version of Windows 11.
Therefore, this is one of those occasions when we recommend updating the operating system to the latest version, because the truth is that the performance gains in games are going to be quite remarkable thanks to DirectStorage 1.1, so without a doubt It’s well worth updating Windows and, of course, the graphics card drivers.
