DirectStorage Issues Identified in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on Nvidia GPUs

A recent investigation by the German outlet ComputerBase has unveiled performance issues tied to DirectStorage in the game Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart when played on Nvidia graphics cards. The removal of the ‘dstorage.dll’ and 'dstoragecore.dll' files significantly enhanced the game's performance metrics on the RTX 4080, with both average FPS increasing and performance dips being minimized. Interestingly, no such effects were noted on AMD GPUs like the RX 7900 XTX, hinting at a Nvidia-specific issue.

Furthermore, the study highlighted memory performance lags on Nvidia devices using SATA-connected SSDs as compared to NVMe drives when the aforementioned files were present. Deleting these files rectified the disparity.

These findings raise speculation about a potential conflict between DirectStorage and Nvidia's RTX IO technology. The porting studio, Nixxes, is anticipated to conduct a thorough investigation and address the matter promptly.