Testing shows Microsoft DirectStorage can be a game-changer for Windows 11 gaming

World's fist DirectStorage SSD

Earlier this year in May, AMD stated that the existing drives in people's systems, even if they were based on NVMe, were probably not good enough for SmartAccess Storage. The SmartAcces Storage technology builds on top of Microsoft's DirectStorage API and following that revelation from AMD, storage products manufacturer released the world's first SSD designed specifically for DirectStorage, in the form of the Sabrent Rocket Plus G. Sabrent has already confirmed that this new "G" variant, which stands for Gaming, is different from the regular Rocket Plus models thanks to the new "O2 GO" as well as underlying hardware changes.

For those unaware, Microsoft announced DirectStorage API two years ago in 2020 for the Windows PC. It was based on Xbox's Velocity architecture and aims to maximize the gaming performance and throughput that can be extracted from modern storage interfaces like those based on PCIe Gen4/5 and NVMe.

The Rocket Plus G was put to the test by TweakTown and the texture streaming benchmark showed extremely promising numbers as it came on top of the chart. The only other product that came close was the Intel Optane P5800X. The numbers suggest that AMD may have been right.

Today, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus G was once again benchmarked, this time by YouTube channel Compusemble. Compared to the last test, this one is meant to test the GPU decompression capabilities of the drive. This technology was introduced with the recent DirectStorage 1.1 update.

As expected, the SSD showed very impressive figures compared to a WD_Black SN850X PCIe Gen 4 drive. In the first instance, with GPU decompression off, the performance was close though the Sabrent Rocket Plus G was faster when it came to the write speeds.

Moving over to the second test with GPU decompression enabled, the Rocket Plus G put on very impressive scores as it was more than twice as fast as an ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro model as can be seen in the image below. While the former had a throughput of 18.09GB/s, the latter was at 8.06GB/s.

Expectedly, thanks to GPU decompression, the CPU usage has been greatly reduced in the test with GPU decompression on.

Source: Compusemble (YouTube) via Wccftech

Testing shows Microsoft DirectStorage can be a game-changer for Windows 11 gaming