Why Starfield is the perfect excuse to get a gaming PC
Bethesda / AMD / NvidiaStarfield looks stunning, the new open-world title from Bethesda is a perfect reason to upgrade, or buy a gaming PC, especially since the game is locked to 30FPS on Xbox.
Starfield is pipped to be one of the most anticipated open-world games ever created. However, there’s one crucial thing that might make you want to play the game on a PC or gaming laptop instead. On both Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, the game will only run at 30 frames per second. This might be a deal-breaker for many gamers.
Consider this: Starfield has a huge open world. Then, you need to think about the physics involved with every object scattered in that world, and then you also need to think about scripting for missions, NPC AI, and way more than that, too. When placing a clearly taxing load onto older hardware, framerates are certain to take a dip. A powerful gaming PC or laptop might just be the answer to getting Starfield running at 60FPS.
Starfield might be CPU intensive
Interestingly, Bethesda has also revealed the PC system requirements of Starfield, too. From what we can glean, the developers require you to have at least a six-core CPU. Additionally, we do not know the resolutions and frame rates targeted for the “minimum” and “recommended” requirements to get Starfield up and running on PC. So, if you want to guarantee 60FPS performance, it might be best to overshoot those requirements.
Considering that consoles run an eight-core Zen 2-based CPU, something that is listed just short of “recommended” in the PC specs. We suspect you might need a little more power under the hood to run the title at 60FPS and beyond.
While the engine that Starfield is running on has not been disclosed, it’s likely that tracking things like object permanence and also simulating physics for them will be one of the biggest technical challenges that the game has to overcome. This example from Skyrim showcases just how far framerates can drop with enough objects onscreen.
While it’s unlikely that you will be throwing thousands of wheels of cheese down a hill, it’s certainly possible to place a number of objects that could cause framerate troubles. Combined with the overall complexity of Starfield in general, when it comes to NPC AI and its other various game systems, it might be taxing for modest PCs in addition to consoles.
This is no huge surprise. If Starfield is as technically complex as the marketing implies, running the game on older hardware could potentially stand to compromise on your overall experience with the game, which could be a buttery 60FPS and beyond.
The solution? Throw a lot of power at it, much more than what Bethesda recommends in its PC specifications.
Brute force power
We believe that Starfield may be a rare game that taxes your CPU heavily. There are also obvious tells towards high-speed texture streaming, given that the game requires you to also have an SSD. There have been no announcements with regard to support for DirectStorage thus far, but we would not be surprised if Bethesda announces this at a later date.
When combined with the visuals of the game, which asks gamers to cough up at least a 1070 Ti, then you might need a real powerhouse to drive frames in this game. We wish that Bethesda included a more detailed system requirements matrix, like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, which is not shy about its RTX 4080 requirement if you wanted to play the title using its “Overdrive” mode.
Below, we’ve listed some prime systems which should scream through Starfield’s seemingly demanding requirements, but we have yet to verify if they will indeed run them at 60FPS. But, it’s a fair bet, considering their power, that they will be able to perform.
Before we love you and leave you with a small list of recommended tech, those playing on a console will not have any access to mods. Who doesn’t want mods in a Bethesda game? But, there’s heaps of time to start saving for the gaming PC of your dreams, mods, high resolutions, and fancy framerates included.
If you click on a product link on this page we may earn a small affiliate commission.