DirectStorage benchmarks show that PCIe 3 drives are nearly as fast as PCIe 5 ones

Because of bandwidth limitations, solid-state drives (SSDs) equipped with various PCIe interfaces have a tendency to give extremely varying performance times in common applications when the demand is high. According to the results of a built-in Forspoken benchmark developed by Compusemble, it appears that the gap in performance between PCIe Gen3 drives and PCIe Gen5 drives is not nearly as significant when using DirectStorage.

The DirectStorage 1.1 application programming interface from Microsoft provides video games with two primary benefits: a reduction in the amount of CPU load that is required to process NVMe requests, which enables a quicker and more efficient transfer of assets from storage to the graphics subsystem; and faster load times, which are made possible by asset compression/decompression algorithms that are handled by the SSD controller and GPU. These algorithms enable the SSD controller and GPU to transfer more data than the storage medium is normally capable of.

We are already aware that DirectStorage has the potential to significantly improve the data transfer rates of solid state drives, and this is true even for SSDs that have a SATA interface. This cuts down on load times, and it also raises the question of whether or not solid-state drives (SSDs) with different interfaces will provide players with varying levels of enjoyment in games that support DirectStorage. As it happens, the answer is not truly yes.

On paper, this indicates that the PCIe Gen3 drive is 32% slower than a PCIe Gen5 SSD; however, in practise, there is no discernible difference in performance between the two types of drives across seven different scenes. In the meantime, the raw data throughput that can be handled by a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface is approximately four times more than that which can be supplied by a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. Therefore, not only does DirectStorage compression function, but it also blurs the boundary between different solid-state drives (SSDs).

Even though there is now only one game that supports Microsoft DirectStorage, it is still a good idea to purchase a PCI Express Gen5 x4 drive for each new computer setup you undertake. The good news is that as DirectStorage develops traction, it is likely that the performance of that SSD will be comparable to that of the next generation of drives when it comes to gaming.