Compression does not guarantee faster loads anymore. Uncompressed assets can be DMA'd directly to their destination. This is part of why GPU decompression (gdeflate like in directstorage, or the special decompression tech in the PS5) is on the rise because it allows you to DMA resources to their destination on the GPU and then decompress them there to avoid the loading time hit involved in decompressing them on-CPU after copying them disk->page cache->userspace app memory.
For HDDs, yes, compression is generally a win. HDDs are dead as far as game development is concerned, all modern targets have flash storage.
Some compression codecs that produce smaller files are also MUCH slower to decompress, which swamps any benefits from the reduced i/o. This is part of why sometimes people pick less efficient formats for use in games.
For HDDs, yes, compression is generally a win. HDDs are dead as far as game development is concerned, all modern targets have flash storage.
Some compression codecs that produce smaller files are also MUCH slower to decompress, which swamps any benefits from the reduced i/o. This is part of why sometimes people pick less efficient formats for use in games.