One of the hottest topics of discussion when space RPG Starfield launched was its optimization (or lack thereof) on PC. problem solved find out Digital Foundry specialist Alex Battaglia.
Image source: Bethesda Game Studios
According to Battaglia, Starfield is best played on the PC. The project avoided many of the problems of modern PC versions (e.g. stuttering due to shader compilation), but has numerous shortcomings:
- Graphics settings are not informative enough;
- there are no basic options (such as adjusting the field of view or anisotropic filtering);
- Unlike the Xbox version, there is no HDR debugging;
- Dynamic resolution only works with vertical sync enabled and doesn’t produce a “flat” 30fps, which is what it is “mostly useless”.
Battaglia also criticized the lack of official support for scaling DLSS and XeSS. Modders have already corrected the situation, and even in this form DLSS shows itself better than FSR 2 – no ghosting or flickering of image elements.
In terms of performance, the Arc A770 is inferior to the RTX 2070 Super and even the base RX 5700, which shouldn’t be the case (Image source: Digital Foundry)
Battaglia found that Starfield performs disproportionately worse on NVIDIA and (especially) Intel graphics cards compared to AMD products. The Radeon RX 6800 XT at Ultra outperformed the RTX 3080 by up to 40%. “That’s not normal”says the expert.
In addition, the PC version of Starfield after Baldur’s Gate 3 suffers from insufficient use of multicore processors: the game runs worse on an i9-12900K with Hyperthreading enabled than without it.
Battaglia’s optimal graphics settings and game “settings” on Xbox Series X (Image source: Digital Foundry)
Battaglia added that 8GB of video memory is enough to run Starfield in 4K at “Ultra” and suggested optimal settings that improve performance without seriously affecting graphics:
- Crowd density, motion blur – low value;
- Shadows (including contact shadows), reflections, volumetric lighting, GTAO, grass – medium;
- Particle quality – medium or high;
- indirect lighting quality – medium, high or ultra;
- variable shading (VRS) – activated.
Starfield was released on September 6th on PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), Xbox Series X and S, and Game Pass (PC and Xbox). Battaglia advised owners of mid-range NVIDIA graphics cards (like the RTX 3070) and Intel to wait for new drivers and patches.
Add Comment