Starfield on PC could be missing one huge feature because of AMD

A new partnership between AMD and Bethesda means that Starfield will be getting a bounty of features, but could lose out on one big PC gaming feature.

Bethesda’s Starfield is currently one of the most anticipated roleplaying games of 2023. The space exploration game is currently on its post-Xbox showcase media tour, and each second of footage looks like a delight.

AMD has announced that it will be Bethesda‘s PC partner for Starfield, which is a little more than having the logo flash up when loading the game. Going exclusive with AMD means that there’s going to be a little more going on under the hood in terms of business, rather than hardware.

While Nvidia-sponsored titles on PC usually feature FSR or XeSS, AMD-sponsored titles generally do not, according to WCCFTech. This means that players will likely not be able to use Intel XeSS or Nvidia DLSS in Starfield at launch.

AMD’s supersampling tech, FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will likely be the only option for players at launch.

AMD and Microsoft’s partnership could cut out Nvidia

Bethesda

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S are built on top of AMD’s graphics and processing architectures. While this won’t affect the game on PC regardless of the hardware you own, it does mean that the possibility of a native DLSS integration is unlikely.

Supersampling is looking like it could be a key tool for those on PC, as the massive scope of the game has forced the developer to lock the game to 30FPS on Xbox. Cyberpunk 2077 has seen ludicrous performance gains since implementing it.

Testing Nvidia’s latest roster of GPUs has also revealed that DLSS 3 is simply too great of a gap to close by AMD any time soon. However, FSR 3 might have a workaround if the codebase is to be believed.

In our reviews of recent PC ports from Sony, we’ve found AMD’s FSR 2.0 still lags behind Nvidia’s DLSS 2 and DLSS 3. Graphical fidelity and overall performance don’t come close to Nvidia’s supersampling.

A recent example would be Resident Evil 4 Remake – another AMD-partnered game – which looks muddy on systems, regardless of where it’s played.

Starfield DLSS support could come from modders

Not all is lost though, as the nature of Bethesda’s games means that modders will be having a field day with Starfield. A Fallout 4 DLSS mod was recently released, with the game seeing a huge uplift in performance.

With Todd Howard, director of Starfield, saying that the game will be a “modders’ paradise”, the only factor appears to be time.