A few days ago we wrote about the recently introduced RTX IO technology from Nvidia. It is built on the open GDeflate standard and provides more efficient data flow to the graphics card. Where previously they had to go through RAM and CPU decompression was used, RAM can now be bypassed to a large extent, data goes straight to VRAM where it is then decompressed by the GPU. This should result in faster loading, less CPU usage, but also smaller file sizes. We first saw this in Portal: Prelude RTX, and in a few days we will have a PC port of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart that uses DirectStorage technology based on RTX IO.
However, in addition to the benefits already mentioned, there is another one not mentioned in the press release – stuttering. Annoying glitches that can often ruin your gaming experience by flooding most of your PC ports lately.
You may experience two main types of stuttering. The first is the so-called shader compilation stutter, caused by the fact that shaders (programs that determine how pixels are rendered) are compiled at runtime. While shaders can easily be pre-compiled on consoles (because they are separate devices), there is an almost infinite number of combinations of PC components, allowing them to be compiled right in the game. Recently, however, the developers are starting to think more about this and give the option to pre-compile shaders in the menu, making the stutter disappear during the game.
The second type is crawl stutter, which is often related to how the game engine works. In fact, there will be a rapid influx of new data into the video memory that the processor cannot cope with, and the game has to “wait” for everything to load. The worse your processor is, the bigger the jam will be. This type of stutter is anything but easy to fix, and you’ll encounter it months after release in games like Dead Space Remake or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. However, given how RTX IO works, this technology can help with bypass stutter. And indeed, Wccftech magazine turned to Nvidia itself, which commented on the following:
“RTX IO could be an assistive technology to eliminate stuttering by reducing CPU reliance on loading textures and geometry and freeing up CPU space for other tasks.”
How much RTX IO will help remains to be seen. Let’s hope that newly released games will support such technology.
Source :Indian TV
