A recent Microsoft blog post (opens in new tab) has corrected the company's earlier statement that DirectStorage, a tech that boosts storage performance to improve gaming, would only be available in Windows 11. Now Microsoft has clarified that DirectStorage will indeed support both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
DirectStorage is a new storage acceleration API, currently used in Xbox Series consoles, that improves game loading times by allowing game data to be transferred directly from an NVMe SSD to the GPU, thus bypassing the CPU.
To further speed up performance, DirectStorage also includes a new GPU decompression technology that supports higher decompression I/O rates and bandwidth than CPUs. That also makes the GPU a better option to decompress game assets.
The only caveat with Windows 10's implementation of DirectStorage will be its older storage stacks -- a set of drivers that allows applications and Windows to communicate with storage devices. This will lead to reduced system performance, compared to Windows 11, but is still better than having no DirectStorage technology at all.
Windows 11 will be equipped with an upgraded storage stack, allowing DirectStorage to operate at its full capacity.
It's great to see Microsoft reducing its system requirements for DirectStorage, allowing far more people to grab the technology and use it on Windows 10 and older hardware.
