Starfield is now available to those who pre-ordered the Premium Edition, and the response has been pretty good, especially in terms of performance, which is unusual for developer Bethesda, as their games have historically had lower frame rates when they debuted on consoles. Inconsistent. As detailed by Digital Foundry, the highly anticipated space sci-fi RPG runs at a solid 30 fps on both the Xbox Series S and Series X, as advertised by the studio. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be a worrying difference in visual fidelity between the two versions, although the higher-end Series X does appear to have more geometric detail.
Some of the sharper details must have something to do with the screen resolution Starfield is running on the console. Digital Foundry Notes The version running on the Xbox Series X can output 4K images thanks to AMD’s FSR supersampling technology, which enhances visual quality without dropping frames. But internally, the game is rendered at 1440p before upscaling to crisp UHD. Meanwhile, on the Xbox Series S, Starfield is rendered at 900p and then upsampled to produce a 1440p image. Regardless, the game runs at 30 fps, which certainly drew the ire of fans when it was announced, although it was certainly done to cope with the CPU load a game of this size would inflict.
The report cites two key areas where Starfield underperformed – the megacity of New Atlantis and Akira, both of which experienced “significant” stuttering and lag despite being capped at 30 fps. Dropped frames. This appears to be consistent across Xbox Series X and Series S, despite the technical limitations that low-cost consoles have generally imposed on developers lately. I’m thinking of the Xbox port of Baldur’s Gate 3, which didn’t have a release window for a long time, as Larian Studios has been working hard to integrate split-screen co-op on the Series S. Some of the frame rate drops in Starfield were reduced by the motion blur effect, which Digital Foundry claims can be turned off at will. This is ideal for people suffering from motion sickness.
Having personally played Fallout 4, which was lagging at launch, and then playing Fallout 76, I was also forced to accept the inside joke from Bethesda fans – wait months before buying, so any performance issues and bugs are resolved. This time, however, things don’t seem to be that bad. As for the PC version, Starfield lacked Nvidia’s DLSS option at launch, which usually helps games run at higher frame rates without sacrificing too much visual quality. Instead, you’ll only find AMD’s AI-powered FSR 2.0 upscaling technology, which considering the chipset company is “exclusive partner‘ For PC version of Starfield.
It’s unclear what this exclusivity deal means for Nvidia GPU owners. Of course, you can still get some performance benefits by enabling FSR2, although it won’t be as ideal when you run it on another manufacturer’s card. Also, running the FSR upgrade on the Nvidia card resulted in a blurry mess when viewing the character model up close. While Bethesda has yet to comment on future DLSS support, AMD head of gaming Frank Azor assured that there is nothing stopping the studio from including DLSS support in Starfield. “If they ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes,” he told us edge.
Starfield is already in early access for those who pre-ordered the Premium Edition; for everyone else, the game launches worldwide on September 6 on PC, Xbox Series S/X, and Xbox Game Pass.
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