AMD’s new compression tech can reduce game install sizes by up to 70%

AMD has detailed its new compression technology to reduce the storage space required for installing games. This innovation, called Neural Texture Block Compression (NTBC), compresses high-quality textures while maintaining “reasonable quality”. According to AMD, NTBC can decrease a game's storage footprint by up to 70%, reducing the installation size of titles like Call of Duty from 150GB to 45GB.

With game sizes rising alongside increasing visual fidelity, traditional compression methods can only do so much, especially when dealing with numerous high-quality 4K textures. To reduce the size used by games installed on users' storage devices, AMD developed Neural Texture Block Compression, which integrates neural network-based image compression.

Shin Fujieda and Takahiro Harada from AMD have authored a detailed technical document on Neural Texture Block Compression. The document illustrates how it can work alongside current compression formats and be a straightforward replacement for existing texture compression techniques game developers use. It's also worth noting that NTBC has various quality modes, similar to FSR and DLSS.

Given the skyrocketing install sizes of AAA titles, with an increasing number of games occupying over 100GB of storage, technologies like AMD's Neural Texture Block Compression are becoming essential. Moreover, this advancement promises to conserve VRAM by utilizing reduced texture sizes. While there's no official word on when developers can access this technology, its potential impact is certainly something to look forward to.

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KitGuru says: Many users would surely benefit from reducing the size of game installations. How much storage space are your games occupying?

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