Developers Please! Direct Storage & ReSizable Bar SAM

[TroNiX_404]

Common Dev's
https://youtu.be/vz_2kXeChCw

[episoder]

Publicado originalmente por TroNiX_404:

Do u have any official support documentation.
Because Direct Storage has only been announced for 1 game so far and it's Forspoken.
And ReSizable Bar isn't support with TLOU according to Nvidia Drivers support and I also checked the compatibility flags.

the video up there is old, back when it was v1.0. it's now v1.1. the info is on micrsosoft's github. the sample code is there. i compiled it. it runs. yes

not sure about rebar. i don't think tlou needs it. it's a tech that allows multiple threads to upload data to the gpu. tlou ocassionally is streaming entire scenes for transition, but i don't think rebar helps alot there. most of the time the game loop or rendering are the main consumer of your cpu. rebar, if done wrong can become a clusterfxck of ressoure-management too, if you're not careful. so...

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por a7:

It's just a new technology (it's been on consoles longer than on PC) and it usually takes time for such things to spread.
But I recommend checking out the demo of Forspoken that's on Steam to see what the loading times are like.

It’s true but Direct Storage was added to Windows in May 2020. Before console launch later in November that year.

I hope it’s not over complicated and expensive to add Direct Storage to PC games.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Publicado originalmente por a7:

Publicado originalmente por Lince_SPAIN:

Direct Storage would make the PC port triple the performance of the PS5 version and remove any CPU bottleneck and loading times as long as you're using a 3080 10GB minimum. And that's why no one is implementing Direct Storage, publishers want to sell the games to the hordes of GTX 1060 and below users.
It should be an option though, something along the lines of ray tracing, but then again budgets are rather limited when it comes to PC ports (that's why they hire the cheapest devs available) so here we are.

DirectStorage works with any card that supports DX12 with shader model 6.0, so including GTX 1060 Pascal cards. Of course, the best results are with the latest technology, but DirectStorage works on such a wide range of older systems where it still has some benefits, that the main reason for not using it at this moment seems to be a reluctance of developers to learn new things.
BTW, it's strange how many people flock to every DirectStorage discussion with misleading informations like: It doesn't work with DX10 (it works), it works only with PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (it works with any storage, but NVMe SSD is recommended for the best performance) etc. Perhaps even many developers still have no idea how DirectStorage could benefit their projects.

You're the one misinformed, it technically works on a 1060, but with textures like this game has and the VRAM buffer that DS requires to decompress data you end up with a tad higher VRAM requirement compared to CPU decompression, that is why publishers are reluctant.

[episoder]

Publicado originalmente por Lince_SPAIN:

You're the one misinformed, it technically works on a 1060, but with textures like this game has and the VRAM buffer that DS requires to decompress data you end up with a tad higher VRAM requirement compared to CPU decompression, that is why publishers are reluctant.

you're kinda uninformed too. the buffer for staging can be setup by the developers. entirely controllable. the default in the reference implementation is 256 MB. so you loose just 512 MB vram. atm i'd still have that budget according to game vram display. on low end systems it should be downscaled accoringly to the expected data loads and thruput. yes

a compressed 4k texture (bc1 packed) consumes around 8.5 MB with all the mipmaps. that's nothing, really. if you go into quality mode (bc7) you look at double the size tho.

the thing with the hardware decompression is: you will loose framerate, cause the gpu will have to do the decompressing too while rendering the game. i have no idea how stable that is. the aync compute that is.

[Not Mr Flıbble]

Publicado originalmente por TroNiX_404:

lol nono ReSizable BAR would need to be programmed into the game's engine and supported by your GPU's driver AND enabled in BIOS as well.

The game's not relevant. The driver and either your operating system's kernel or the BIOS are where the support has to be. And the driver should not have need to expose the presence of support for this; it's basically an implementation detail.

I know that for AMD hardware, Linux will resize the BAR regardless of the BIOS configuration (and will resize appropriately for the amount of VRAM regardless of what the GPU's vBIOS says).

radv (part of Mesa) supports large BAR and has optimisations for it, but you have to enable it by setting the game's environment up appropriately (there's an enviroment variable which the driver uses).

As for DirectStorage, apparently that works via Wine & vkd3d…

[a7]

Publicado originalmente por C1REX-PL:

It’s true but Direct Storage was added to Windows in May 2020. Before console launch later in November that year.

DirectStorage became available on PC on March 14th, 2022
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-api-available-on-pc/
But release 1.1 on November 7th, 2022 brought GPU decompression support, an essential thing for DS performance.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-now-available/

Publicado originalmente por Lince_SPAIN:

You're the one misinformed, it technically works on a 1060, but with textures like this game has and the VRAM buffer that DS requires to decompress data you end up with a tad higher VRAM requirement compared to CPU decompression, that is why publishers are reluctant.

I was just using information from Microsoft's developer blog.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-1-1-coming-soon/
I would be interested in the source of your information, preferably with some tests. Any link?

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por a7:

I would be interested in the source of your information, preferably with some tests. Any link?

I think your information is correct. I keep looking for answers and often read tons of random forums posts and possibly fake data. I feel more confused about the topic now than I was before :(
Thank you for clarification and a link to the source.

[a7]

Publicado originalmente por C1REX-PL:

I think your information is correct. I keep looking for answers and often read tons of random forums posts and possibly fake data. I feel more confused about the topic now than I was before :( Thank you for clarification and a link to the source.

Okay, I'm glad it helped.

[PRAET0R1AN™]

Publicado originalmente por Maverick81PL:

Publicado originalmente por PRAET0R1AN™ ︻デ =ー:

If you download nvidia profile inspector you can actually force rebar on through the driver via the game profiles in nvidia inspector.

How well it works though is up for debate.

wait, what??
" inspector you can actually force rebar" ?!? ?!? ?!?

I think you must first have compatible CPU and Motherboard to enable these in BIOS, forcing software do something here??

It must be enabled in the bios and you need a GPU that supports it, That's pretty obvious.

There is a flag in the driver for it and it's set to "disabled" by default, But with Nvidia Profile inspector you absolutely can switch the flag to "enabled" and give it a profile to work with ( BFV etc etc )

https://i.imgur.com/pYBIMxQ.png

And as I very clearly wrote in my original reply on this thread.. which I've highlighted in bold for context.

Publicado originalmente por PRAET0R1AN™ ︻デ =ー:

If you download nvidia profile inspector you can actually force rebar on through the driver via the game profiles in nvidia inspector.

How well it works though is up for debate.