Rohit Tiwari
Starfield has seen a stable, bug-free launch in comparison to other Bethesda titles and has been optimized to run smoothly on a wide range of supported hardware. But it isn’t as simple as it seems, the game is heavily biased to AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 or FSR 2 to upscale images and pushes FPS higher and it demands players to keep FSR 2 turned on and it does not support Nvidia DLSS or Intel Xess.
However, a game as big as Starfield relying too much on one feature is not what players would have wanted as it makes them choose between graphics and performance, especially those players who are on less powerful hardware. AMD clarified that they haven’t blocked DLSS and Bethesda is free to implement the feature and it will have full support from AMD.
Starfield Leans Heavily on AMD FSR
Despite the statement from AMD, Nvidia DLSS and Intel XeSS are not in the game, and although, indeed, FSR sometimes improves performance and image quality, it isn’t as good as DLSS and it falls behind DLSS. In high-performance mode, when DLSS maintains image quality and detailing, FSR 2 is nowhere near it.
DLSS would help players PC players maintain performance on a certain level with less powerful GPUs but unfortunately, it is not possible in Starfield. There is no issue with FSR as it is a great feature and it works with any GPU, which makes it more attractive but Starfield supporting FSR exclusively is where Bethesda went wrong. Although there is a mod available that lets players add DLSS to players it is of no use honestly and there is no change whatsoever.
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Starfield Gamers with Nvidia and Intel GPUs Suffer
FSR and DLSS upscale images and boost fps but it looks like Starfield is just built around FSR and all four presets enable FSR 2 by default. Considering, that if the players do not have the current-gen AMD GPUs for Starfield, there’ll only be the difference between playable and unplayable, especially on a low-end graphics card.
Even with FSR, the graphics cards aren’t maintaining 60fps in areas like New Atlantis and players would need FSR at High and Ultra to bump the cards they can also tweak the graphics settings down, but that’s not a good deal if the players have AMD’s latest 1080p and 4K graphics cards. Even though Starfield is built around upscaling, it finds it hard to upscale lose details, and look messy at low and medium presets and this is because FSR can not keep up with internal render resolution.
With Starfield leaning heavily on FSR, the players with Nvidia and Intel GPUs are suffering as they can not use the DLSS or XeSS and even if they can, it just is worse than FSR. Also, according to a hardware survey by Steam, only 38% of players have a graphics card that can use DLSS and that’s a very low number. However, this isn’t just AMD’s fault, and in a world where games like Remnant 2 support both FSR and DLSS, expecting the same from a game as highly anticipated as Starfield is fair.
Starfield Does Not Support AMD FSR 3
When AMD announced their partnership with Starfield and also announced FSR 3 alongside which uses frame interpolation and improves performance across PCs and consoles. It was expected that the game would release with it, however, FSR 3 shockingly doesn’t support Starfield and while AMD revealed that FSR 3 is coming in September to different games such as Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, Starfield was missing from that list.
Considering how AMD released an exclusive Starfield graphics card, it was expected that it would be announced that FSR 3 would be coming to the game but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen anytime soon. It would have been better if Starfield supported FSR 3 if it was designed around exclusively supporting FSR.
Also Read: Starfield September Soars Xbox Series X to New Heights with More Than 1000% Jump in Amazon Sales
Players on PC do not have many options and there is a need for consideration as to how can image quality and performance improved on PC. However, it’s good news for players on Xbox as it has FSR on AMD chips and it upscales images and boosts performance. They are safe from any issues and can enjoy the game without any hiccups.
Source: Digital Trends
