Microsoft's next-gen DirectStorage tech won't be locked to Windows 11 - hennessybutoot

Put bolt down your pitchforks, fellow gambling geeks. Windows DirectStorage—the following-gen storage technology that powers the Xbox Series X's blazing Velocity Storage system—will equal coming to Windows 10 as well as Windows 11, Microsoft confirmed this weekend. That means the superintendent-fast storage technical school of tomorrow won't be used Eastern Samoa a stick power gamers to Microsoft's upcoming operating system, as many feared and Microsoft itself firmly implied.

DirectStorage (and Nvidia's RTX Io) lets NVMe SSDs send data directly to the lightning-ready dedicated VRAM on your art card, bypassing the usual itinerary through the CPU and general system memory. Information technology essentially cuts out the pokey processor middle-man while besides liberation up your Central processing unit to act up other work, and if the initial results from Xbox Series X games are any indication, DirectStorage could atomic number 4 a game-changer when it lands on Windows. Microsoft aims to kill game-loading multiplication connected the PC as fit as fugly texture pop-in.

Initially—and intelligibly—gamers had been worried that Microsoft would restrict DirectStorage to the Windows 11 OS coming impossible this holiday flavor. In an Xbox Wire post detailing Windows 11, Microsoft's Sarah Bond flat-out stated that DirectStorage "will only be available with Windows 11." PC enthusiasts are already in a fuss over Windows 11's paltry list of supported CPUs, which kicks many recent processors (including first-gen AMD Ryzen and 7th-gen Intel Core families) to the curb bit. Microsoft also unnatural gamers to climb to Windows 10 to get the benefits of DirectX 12 fourth-year kick upstairs cycle, though it eventually discharged DX12 for Windows 7 years later.

Gulp. Mix those concerns with the awesome potential of DirectStorage and you can see why common people were anxious—needlessly, as IT turns out.

"Microsoft is intended to ensuring that when gamy developers adopt a new API, they can reach as many gamers as possible," Hassan Uraizee explains in a blog situatio announcing the DirectStorage developer preview (and reported by PC Gamer). "As so much, games built against the DirectStorage SDK will cost compatible with Windows 10, version 1909 and upwards."

Sol you can let out that long-held breath, friends. Along with computer hardware-settled irradiatio tracing, DirectStorage is one of the to the highest degree thrilling new gaming features introduced in many, some years. Bringing it to Windows 10 should appease PC gamers who are existence chucked overboard aside Windows 11's firm CPU requirements—and, as Uraizee says, ensure a much wider potentiality audience for developers embracing DirectStorage, bounteous the technology much higher odds of establishing a foothold in the real universe.

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Brad Chacos spends his days digging direct desktop PCs and tweeting too much.