How does the Intel Arc A770 perform with DirectStorage 1.1?

DirectStorage 1.1 has reportedly picked sides in the Intel-AMD-Nvidia GPU skirmish, having given the blue team a slight but considerable edge in asset decompression speeds.

Microsoft's DirectStorage 1.1 is a powerful software standard that gives video game developers the option to drastically improve loading times and reduce CPU overhead on a Windows system. The latest version of the promising feature was launched in 2022, leading to enthusiasts testing and advertising its capabilities.

In a recent finding, DirectStorage 1.1 helped top-rated graphics cards outperform a premium processor in video game asset decompression speeds. Furthermore, the test also witnessed a surprising development, with Intel's latest GPU outperforming Nvidia and AMD's prized creations under DirectStorage's influence.

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The Intel Arc A770 offers faster decompression speeds than its major competitors with DirectStorage

The Arc A770 is a mid-range graphics card developed by Intel and was released in late 2022. By its benchmarks, the latest Arc has proven to be a decent card for gaming and content creation. However, it also comes with a few caveats, which aren't unexpected for an affordable graphics processing unit.

When compared to the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT cards, the Intel Arc A770 is pretty underpowered, although it has been able to deliver worthy performance quotients, similar to that of the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060.

That said, the Arc A770 happens to be more efficient with asset decompression when powered by Microsoft's DirectStorage 1.1 and NVMe SSDs.

Category	SATA 6 Gbits/s	PCIe 3.0	PCIe 4.0
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080	1.47	12.7	15.3
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT	1.27	12.6	14.6
Intel Arc A770	1.64	13.9	16.8
Intel Core i9-12900K	1.47	5.2	5.2

(Data collected from PC Games Hardware)

In a report by PC Games Hardware, Intel's most powerful graphics card managed to complete decompression tasks faster than the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT.

With PCIe 4.0-enabled drives, the Arc A770 offered an asset decompression speed of 16.8 Gbits/s while the RTX 4080 and the RX 7900 XT sat at 15.3 Gbits/s and 14.6 Gbits/s respectively. Interestingly, Intel's GPU managed to deliver faster decompression using PCIe 3.0 and SATA drives as well.

The difference, although astonishing, is subtle, as DirectStorage 1.1 was able to boost loading times from five seconds to a mere half second, regardless of the GPU used. Nevertheless, Intel seems to be leading the pack.

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What is DirectStorage and how is it useful?

Video games are made up of a massive amount of data, usually hundreds of gigabytes, most of which goes into building assets for characters, environments, objects, and mechanics. Developers have to compress the final game file size to be able to ship it.

When a game, not polished with DirectStorage, is run on a system, the CPU takes responsibility for decompressing its assets and loading them onto the GPU to render all of data on-screen. This CPU-to-GPU transfer phase is what increases loading times, which can be annoying to gamers.

DirectStorage's introductory version helped reduce this CPU overhead and increase I/O throughput. However, Microsoft wasn't going to stop at just that, with the company vouching to introduce extensive GPU decompression by the end of 2022.

With DirectStorage's latest version, Microsoft has managed to shift the CPU's burden entirely onto the GPU, thereby drastically improving the transfer phase and freeing the CPU up for more important multi-tasking needs. Developers can incorporate this technology to boost loading speeds for their video games.

Microsoft's venture led to the conclusion that graphics cards are more efficient in dealing with repetitive tasks like data decompression than central processors.

In combination with modern solid-state drives featuring high bandwidth and Windows 11, modern graphics cards powered by DirectStorage 1.1 are all set to revolutionize loading speeds forever.