It’s scarily common for games to launch with a preference towards either Nvidia or AMD. This could be based on deals done by the marketing department or just a studio’s strategy for how they build and optimize the game. Starfield certainly showed a preference towards Team Red in the beginning, but now, Nvidia is back on the scene and quickly tipped the performance scales back in its favor.
Starfield sits on our list of the best PC games of 2023, but from a purely performance aspect, it’s been anything but plain sailing. Early performance woes could have been avoided had DLSS been implemented natively from the get-go, but this job fell to modders instead.
Following a successful albeit unofficial run for DLSS in Starfield, Bethesda announced that official support was coming, and with it, a major sigh of relief for those who rely on the upscaling tech.
When DLSS arrived, the expected result was that performance would balance out across AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, however, the true result is one that will have Team Red cringing.
Starfield now performs better on Nvidia GPUs, with the CapFrameX Twitter (X) account posting some benchmarks. It’s noted that at launch, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 was around 8% behind the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. In the latest update, the RTX 4090 now holds a huge 23% lead. In Leyman’s terms, the RTX 4090 has an average fps of 112 while the RX 7900 XTX manages an average fps of 96. In a game optimized for AMD tech, it’s a disappointing result.
It should be noted that these performance scores are from the very top end of the graphics card market, and don’t speak to how mid-low range options are performing. However, anyone with an RTX card should benefit greatly from the inclusion of DLSS if you adjust your Starfield settings accordingly.
The benchmarks are also run at 1440p, which is still far from the most common resolution that most gamers play at, as we often learn from the Steam hardware surveys.
Still haven’t dived into Starfield over concerns you might not be able to run it, then check out the Starfield system requirements to get the inside track on the hardware you need. You can also check out StarfieldDb for the most comprehensive guides to Bethesda’s space exploration game.