The latest Starfield update is yet to go live for all players but those willing and brave enough to try it early can do now do so and may find their frame rates are higher than usual. This is thanks to some further post-launch optimizations made by Bethesda as part of this patch, which appear to alleviate CPU bottlenecks.
Wandering through the cities of Neon or New Atlantis can prove challenging for even the best gaming CPUs and graphics cards alike, with the former put under particular strain given the amount of NPCs in each. As such, any effort to boost processor performance in Starfield is a welcome one, with recent benchmarks demonstrating a solid uplift.
Preliminary testing of Patch 1.11.33 conducted by MxBenchmarkPC via Starfield’s Steam beta branch shows that even systems equipped with a GeForce RTX 4080 should benefit from this update. However, it’s important to note that this is the beta version of the patch, available via the Steam beta branch which you can access for yourself.
Wandering through the cityscape, MxBenchmarkPC breaks their benchmarks down into two categories: GPU performance and CPU performance. GPU tests are conducted at 4K using close-to-maximum settings and sees no noticeable difference between patches but things do improve once we drop down to 1440p and strain the CPU.
Thanks to these CPU optimizations, MxBenchmarkPC’s Core i7 10700F doesn’t hold back the system as much and sees average frames-per-second increase by as much as 7fps. It’s unclear how these improvements would translate to a more modern chip, like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but we’d expect to see modest gains there too.
Bethesda hasn’t gone into detail about what this update’s “general stability and performance improvements” are, as listed in the patch notes. Nonetheless, these early tests are promising and hopefully might not be all waiting for players come its general release.
For those in search of the best Starfield settings, we’ve got you covered. If you’re after details about the game’s upcoming Shattered Space DLC, check out our guide.
Still looking for more Starfield content? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.