DirectStorage is Microsoft’s API that lets a game load compressed assets straight from an NVMe SSD toward the graphics card, skipping much of the CPU work that older loading paths needed. In practice that means shorter level loads and fewer hitches while an open world streams in. The gains depend on three things: a fast NVMe drive, a current graphics driver, and a game that actually uses the API.
This guide covers what to check, in order, if you want more out of DirectStorage on a gaming PC. You will see the search term “2.0” a lot in forums, and the sections below explain why that number is less useful than it looks. All figures are estimates based on drive ratings and typical game behavior, not measured results from one game build.
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What DirectStorage does under the hood
Traditional loading works in a chain. The game asks Windows to read a file, Windows hands the bytes to the CPU, the CPU decompresses them, and the result is copied into GPU memory. Each hop adds latency and occupies CPU threads that could be running game logic. Large open worlds make this worse because they need hundreds of small, compressed files within a second of the player moving.
DirectStorage shortens that chain. The game submits batches of read requests to the storage stack, and on supported hardware the GPU can take over decompression. The CPU still schedules the work, but it no longer unpacks every texture and mesh by itself. That matters most for games with big compressed asset packs, where the CPU would otherwise spend a large share of its time on unpacking rather than on physics, AI and draw calls.
Think of the storage path as a queue. Older APIs push requests through a small number of threads, one after another. DirectStorage accepts many requests at once, so an NVMe drive can work at close to its queue capacity. NVMe drives are built for deep parallel queues, which is why the API is pitched around them. A SATA drive has a much shallower command ceiling, so it cannot exploit the batching in the same way, and that gap is the main reason drive class matters so much.
The visible benefits are shorter level loads, fewer frame-time spikes when the camera turns quickly in an open world, and faster fast travel. DirectStorage does not raise the average frame rate of a GPU-bound scene. If your graphics card already sits near 99 percent load at 1440p, faster reads will not add fps in that scene. Expect the help to show up in 1% lows during streaming moments rather than in steady-state fps.
A quick diagnostic helps. If a loading bar barely moves when you swap a SATA drive for NVMe, the game is probably not using DirectStorage, or the bottleneck is CPU or GPU work rather than reads. Check the game’s options and documentation before blaming the drive.
Why the “2.0” label causes confusion
People search for “DirectStorage 2.0” because they see the number in forum threads, store listings and driver release discussions. The label is used loosely, and it does not map cleanly to a single download you can verify on your PC. What matters for performance is which capabilities your Windows build, GPU driver and game actually use at runtime.
When you compare two claims, check the date of the source and the driver or Windows build it mentions. A post that quotes a feature from one release may not describe the software on your machine. Note your exact Windows build from Settings, under System and then About, so every claim you check later is matched to the same software stack.
Patch notes give a more useful picture. A game may say it uses DirectStorage, or that it supports GPU decompression, which arrived with DirectStorage 1.1. Those phrases point at the same family of features. When you read a newer claim, translate it into the question that matters: does this game read assets through the DirectStorage path, and does the GPU handle decompression on my hardware?
To verify what your system supports, start with Windows. Keep it on a current build, because storage and DirectX components ship through updates. Next, check the GPU driver date in your vendor’s control utility. Finally, open the game’s graphics or performance menu and look for a DirectStorage or GPU decompression toggle. If the game lists one, the feature is in use when the toggle is on.
The practical rule is simple. Do not buy hardware to chase a version number. Spend your budget on drive speed, and keep the software stack current. Those are the parts you control, and they explain most of the difference between a fast install and a slow one.
Also be skeptical of percentages. Any gain you read online depends on the drive, CPU, game build and scene that were used. If you want a number that means something for your PC, measure your own before-and-after load time with the same save file and route, as described later in this guide.
Storage hardware that gets the biggest benefit
Drive class sets the ceiling for DirectStorage. The table below lists rated sequential read speeds for common drive types. These are interface and manufacturer ratings, not our measurements, and game loads read smaller blocks at random offsets, where the real gap is narrower than the table suggests. The “expected effect” column is our estimate.
| Drive type | Typical rated sequential read | Expected DirectStorage effect (estimate) |
|---|---|---|
| PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD | about 7,000 MB/s | Most headroom for heavy open-world streaming; fewest streaming hitches |
| PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD | about 3,500 MB/s | Strong value; most of the gain over SATA is already captured |
| SATA SSD | about 550 MB/s | Modest benefit; the SATA interface caps streaming throughput |
| Hard disk drive | about 150 to 200 MB/s | Little benefit; loads stay slow and stutter remains likely |
PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives have the most room to spare. For current models, see our best NVMe SSD for gaming guide. They suit open-world titles that stream large amounts of texture data while the player moves fast, such as racing or flight games with dense scenery. Their advantage is clearest in sustained streaming, and it is smaller in short, scripted loads. If you already have a PCIe 3.0 drive, the jump to Gen4 is worth it mainly when you play streaming-heavy games every week.
PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives are the best value for most builders. The large step is from SATA to NVMe, and a Gen3 drive captures most of that step. Our estimate is that a well-chosen Gen3 drive gets most of the practical benefit for typical gaming, with the Gen4 advantage showing up in specific titles rather than across the board.
SATA SSDs still help a lot compared with hard disks, and our NVMe vs SATA SSD for gaming comparison explains where the gap matters. However, the SATA interface caps throughput around 550 MB/s. If you are upgrading from a SATA drive, expect the biggest change from that move rather than from Gen3 to Gen4. SATA remains a reasonable home for older games that you play occasionally.
Hard disk drives do not get a meaningful rescue from DirectStorage. If you are still deciding between drive classes for your library, the best SSD for gaming roundup is a useful starting point. Seek time and low throughput are physical limits, and no API removes them. Move game installs to an SSD first, then apply the settings in this guide. Keep the HDD for media, backups or launchers’ rarely used titles.
To confirm what you own, read the model number on the drive or in the manufacturer’s utility. The spec sheet lists whether it is NVMe and which PCIe generation it uses. Then check the motherboard manual to make sure the M.2 slot runs at its native PCIe generation and does not share lanes with SATA ports you are also using.
Windows and driver settings to check
Start with Windows Update. Storage stack fixes and DirectX components arrive through cumulative updates, and a missed update can leave the system on an older path. Install pending updates, restart, and then run one load test so you have a baseline that reflects the current build rather than an older one.
Next, verify the GPU driver. DirectStorage GPU decompression depends on driver support, so use the driver from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel rather than a generic Windows driver. Use the vendor’s installer, and select the option for a clean install only when a problem persists. Note the driver version in your test log so you can tell later whether an update changed anything.
Keep the chipset driver current as well. Chipset drivers manage the PCIe links your NVMe drive depends on, and an outdated package can leave a link in a conservative mode. Download it from the motherboard maker’s support page for your exact model, and avoid third-party driver bundles that install unrelated utilities.
SSD firmware is the third check. Most drive makers offer a utility that reports the firmware version and offers updates. Read the release notes before updating, because some firmware revisions change caching behavior. Do not expect large gains from firmware alone. It mainly fixes stability bugs, which matter because a drive that drops out under load will ruin any streaming test.
The power plan can affect NVMe consistency. Balanced is fine for most people. In Advanced power settings, the PCI Express link state power management option can be set to Off to keep the link awake. This may make latency more consistent at the cost of a little idle power, which is a reasonable trade on a desktop.
Finally, check the BIOS. Make sure the NVMe slot is set to its native generation and that resizable BAR and other GPU options are enabled if your platform supports them. Use the motherboard manual to confirm which M.2 slot connects directly to the CPU and which one shares lanes with other devices. A drive in a slot that is bottlenecked by chipset lanes will not show its full potential.
Game-side settings and what to look for
Many games expose DirectStorage in the graphics or performance menu. Leave it enabled unless you see crashes after a patch, in which case disable it, verify files, and report the problem to the developer. Turning it off does not usually improve fps, so do not disable it hoping for a frame-rate gain.
Some titles use the path only for textures, while others use it for textures, meshes and levels. The settings label rarely tells you the full scope. Read the patch notes and look for phrases such as “streaming improvements” or “faster loading” in the changelog, because those tend to indicate that the storage path changed.
During a load, open Resource Monitor and watch the Disk tab. A healthy NVMe load shows a short, high burst of read throughput. If the drive sits at low throughput while one CPU core is pinned at 100 percent, the bottleneck is decompression or shader work, not storage. DirectStorage cannot fix that kind of wait.
Shader compilation is a separate problem. The stutter that appears the first time you enter a new area, after a driver update or on first launch, is usually shader compilation. DirectStorage will not remove it. Shader caches persist after the first run in most titles, so the stutter often drops after the first session. Do not clear caches unless the game asks you to, because you will just repeat the compile work.
If a game offers a separate streaming or texture-streaming slider, change one setting at a time during our research. Combining a DirectStorage toggle with a streaming budget change makes it impossible to know which one moved the result, and you end up with a configuration that works but cannot be explained.
Separate the install from the Windows drive if you can. Large installs on a dedicated NVMe drive keep the system drive free of big game files and make free-space management simpler. The separation is not required, but it makes the test results easier to read, since Windows background writes stay away from the drive you are measuring.
Keep notes. Record the game build, the driver version, the drive model and each load time. A change in any one of those can explain a difference, and without the log, you will not know which update changed the result.
GPU decompression and what your graphics card needs
GPU decompression moves unpacking work from the CPU to the graphics card. It needs a GPU and driver that support the feature, and the game has to use the path. Older cards still run DirectStorage through the CPU path, so the API works on them, but they do not get the GPU-side benefit. Check your vendor’s driver notes for the list of supported GPU families.
The trade-off is real. Decompression runs on the GPU while the game streams, which means the card does a little extra work during heavy loads. On a graphics card already near its limit, that extra work can cost a few fps for a short time. On a card with spare capacity, the cost is usually invisible. Our estimate is that the cost is small and brief for most mid-range and higher cards, but it depends on the scene and the settings.
CPU-limited systems gain more from the change. A modest CPU paired with a fast graphics card often spends a lot of time on asset unpacking during streaming. Moving that work to the GPU frees CPU threads for game logic, which can make 1% lows steadier. This is one area where the benefit depends more on the processor than on the drive.
VRAM is the limit that DirectStorage does not change. Streaming pulls more textures into video memory, and a card with 8 GB may still show texture pop-in in heavy scenes regardless of how fast the drive is. Faster loading helps the textures arrive sooner, but it does not add memory. If you see pop-in on a fast drive, lower texture quality before blaming the storage path.
Driver and GPU family both matter, so write down the exact model and driver version alongside any load-time result. A decompression path that works well on one generation may behave differently on another, and two cards with similar fps ratings can show different load behavior in the same game.
To find out whether decompression is the bottleneck during a load, watch GPU utilization in the overlay or in Task Manager. A short spike to high utilization during a load is expected when the GPU is decompressing. A sustained high load across the whole session suggests the scene itself is GPU-bound, and the storage path is not the limit.
Free space, placement and fragmentation
Keep at least 15 to 20 percent of an NVMe drive free. SSD controllers need spare space for wear leveling and garbage collection. When the drive is almost full, write performance drops and background housekeeping competes with game reads. The exact threshold varies by drive, but a drive that is 90 percent full is more likely to show streaming hitches than one at 70 percent.
Watch free space during a long play session as well as before a test. Shader caches, save backups and patch downloads can consume several gigabytes in a few days. A drive that started at 25 percent free can drift into the range where write slowdowns appear, so check the figure weekly rather than only when something feels wrong.
Do not defragment an SSD. Windows runs its optimization tool on SSDs to send TRIM commands, which tell the drive which blocks are free. That is the correct maintenance for flash storage. A traditional defrag adds writes and offers no read benefit on an SSD, so leave the scheduled optimization in place and skip manual defrag jobs.
Place the largest and most-streamed games on the fastest drive. Titles you play rarely can go on a SATA SSD without much cost. This keeps the drive that matters for streaming free from games that you touch once a month. Large files like video captures and cloud sync folders should also stay off the gaming drive when possible.
Background writes can hurt more than you expect. Game downloads, Steam shader caches and cloud sync clients write a lot of data in the background. If one of them runs during a load test, your measurement reflects the writes as well as the reads. Pause downloads before a test, and close sync clients that watch the game folder.
When a game patch rebuilds its data files, the launcher’s verify option is the first step. A full reinstall is rarely needed, but it can clear a damaged install that causes odd stutter. Do the verify first, then recheck load times. If the game still stutters after a clean verify, move on to the troubleshooting steps below.
How to measure a real improvement
Warm the system before the run. A cold start includes background indexing, first-run shader work and driver setup that a later load does not, so launch the game once, exit, and then start the timed sequence. Keep the same display settings, close other windows, and leave the mouse still so the input path does not change between runs.
Set up a repeatable test before changing anything. Use the same save file, the same starting point, the same resolution and the same graphics preset. Run each load three times, discard any run with a background interruption, and average the rest. Without a repeatable route, a single run tells you almost nothing about the drive.
Time the load with a stopwatch or a phone recording at 60 fps. Start when you confirm the load action and stop when the character has control in the world. Frame counting from a 60 fps video gives you about 16.7 ms per frame, which is accurate enough for load-time comparisons of several seconds. For smaller differences, use the game’s own logs if the title provides them.
Use Resource Monitor’s Disk tab to see the read throughput while the load runs. This tells you whether the drive is the limit. If read speed peaks at a level well below the drive’s rating while the game waits, the bottleneck is somewhere else, such as CPU decompression or shader work.
Expect the pattern to match the hardware. Moving a game from SATA to NVMe should give a noticeable load-time cut, often several seconds in a large level. Moving from a PCIe 3.0 drive to a PCIe 4.0 drive usually gives a smaller change, and the gain shows up mainly in streaming-heavy titles. These are estimates from drive ratings, not from a particular game.
For streaming smoothness, look beyond the average frame rate. A frame-time graph or the 1% lows from a benchmark overlay reveal the hitches that DirectStorage is meant to reduce. Average fps can stay flat while 1% lows improve, which is exactly the pattern you should expect from a storage-path change.
When you share numbers, label them as estimates unless you ran the test yourself and can describe the setup. A single run proves nothing, and a difference of one or two seconds can come from background activity, so repeat the test before drawing a conclusion.
Troubleshooting: what to do if DirectStorage does not help
If DirectStorage seems to do nothing, start with the game. Confirm that it uses the feature by checking the options menu, the patch notes and any notice shown at launch. Some titles enable the path only on certain builds or after the shader cache rebuilds, so an update can change behavior overnight. A game that never mentions the feature may not use it at all.
Next, check the drive. Confirm that the game is installed on the internal NVMe drive, not a secondary SATA drive or an external USB enclosure. External enclosures cap throughput well below internal NVMe speeds, and that alone can erase the benefit. During a load, Task Manager’s Performance tab shows whether the drive is busy. A drive running near its rated read speed is doing its job, while a drive that barely moves points to a different bottleneck.
If the drive looks idle while one CPU core sits at 100 percent, the load is limited by decompression or shader work. DirectStorage cannot fix that. Close background applications, update the chipset driver, and check whether the stutter is only on the first run of a new shader set. Those steps address the real wait.
If the GPU is the limit, lower texture quality or resolution for a test run. Lower texture settings reduce how much data needs to stream, which makes the storage path less visible. If the stutter disappears at lower texture settings, the problem is probably VRAM rather than the drive.
If stutter continues after a clean reinstall, run the launcher’s verify option, check SSD health with the vendor tool, and confirm the drive is not more than 80 percent full. A failing or nearly full drive can cause hitches that look like an API problem. Look at the SMART health readout and any error log the vendor utility provides. Our how to check SSD health guide walks through those readouts step by step.
Finally, roll back a recent GPU driver if the stutter started right after an update. Keep a short log of driver version, game build and drive model so you can tell which change caused the problem. Without that record, you will keep guessing, and a driver rollback is much easier to justify when the timeline is clear.
Frequently asked questions
Is DirectStorage 2.0 a separate version I need to install?
Treat “2.0” as a marketing label, not an install step. DirectStorage reaches your PC through Windows and the GPU driver, and games call it from their own code. What you control is a current Windows build, a current GPU driver, and the DirectStorage option inside the game when it has one. Check the game’s patch notes to see which features it uses.
Will an NVMe SSD make DirectStorage faster than a SATA SSD?
Usually yes for streaming-heavy games, because NVMe offers much higher read throughput and deeper command queues than SATA. Rated sequential speeds are roughly 3,500 MB/s for PCIe 3.0 NVMe and about 550 MB/s for SATA, though game loads read smaller blocks, so the real gap is smaller. Expect the biggest visible change in load times and streaming hitches, not in average frame rate.
Does DirectStorage raise fps in GPU-bound scenes?
No. When the graphics card is already at or near full load, the bottleneck is shading or rendering, and faster reads do not change that. DirectStorage mainly helps moments when the game pulls in new textures and geometry, which show up as frame-time spikes or texture pop-in. Watch 1% lows during those moments to see the effect, and treat any percentage you read online as specific to that scene.
Does GPU decompression use extra graphics power?
It can. Decompression runs on the GPU during streaming, so a card near its limit may lose some fps during heavy loads. Cards with spare capacity usually absorb the work without a visible drop. The trade-off is less CPU work and faster loads in exchange for a small, short-lived GPU cost. Check GPU utilization during a load to see which side of that trade your system sits on.
Can DirectStorage fix stutter on a hard disk drive?
It helps far less. A hard disk drive reads about 150 to 200 MB/s and has high seek latency, which the API cannot remove. Games installed on an HDD still load slowly and stutter during streaming. Moving the game install to an SSD, even a SATA SSD, is the change that matters most. Then apply the driver and game settings covered in this guide.
