A new update has arrived for Starfield giving the game FSR 3 support, as well as a host of other optimizations over five months after the game initially launched in early September.
While Starfield had FSR 3 support in the latest Steam beta at the beginning of the month, it’s now available for everyone else as of patch 1.9.67. Said patch update also includes Intel XeSS support as well, meaning that whether you’re running one of the best graphics cards made by either AMD or Intel, you should hopefully experience far more consistent performance in Bethesda’s latest open world RPG. The full patch notes go into more granular detail.
Interestingly, the latest Starfield patch has also apparently fixed an issue that “could make the clouds appear to vibrate” when using DLSS in Performance mode. Nvidia DLSS was initially completely missing during the game’s rocky September launch window but was later patched into the game back in November, meaning RTX users could use the AI upscaling tech for far more stable performance in the shooter. The update also fixes a resolution scaling error when switching from Fullscreen to windowed.
Starfield should be a more optimized game now
AMD FSR 3 launched only a couple of weeks after Starfield’s September 6 release date on Steam and Xbox Game Pass, but it’s taken this long to actually implement into the game. While FSR 2 worked well enough on leading AMD graphics cards such as the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, anyone using more humbly powered hardware may have been scaling their settings down more. That’s because Starfield’s system requirements weren’t exactly too flexible. Now, with Frame Generation, that should be sorted.
In a recent post on Bethesda’s website, it’s been stated that you’ll want to use FSR 3 in conjunction with VSync to ensure the smoothest and most consistent performance without screen tearing or other issues impacting the gameplay. A monitor with VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) is also recommended, too. We recommend using one of the best gaming monitors for the definitive Starfield experience.
It will be interesting to see how the new patch update benefits Starfield’s performance on Intel Arc graphics cards through XeSS’ implementation. Prior to this update, the Arc A750, was just about able to achieve 30fps in 1080p according to Intel Arc Testing via YouTube. Modded Intel XeSS footage saw framerate boosts around 10%, so hopefully the game will be able to squeeze out a few extra frames for those running on lower-end hardware.
Image Credit: Bethesda
