Starfield is right here, and it’s laborious on {hardware}
Bethesda Sport Studios’ Starfield is lastly obtainable, and we now have been spending our weekend testing this new RPG throughout quite a lot of PC {hardware} configurations forward of the sport’s mainstream launch on September fifth. On this article we will probably be analysing the PC model of Starfield, and we will probably be diving deep into how PC avid gamers can increase this sport’s efficiency on their programs.
Starfield is the primary single participant RPG that Bethesda has launched since Fallout 4 launched in 2015. Since then a brand new console era has landed, and gaming {hardware} had superior considerably. That stated, Starfield has launched with out fashionable graphical options like ray tracing on PC and consoles, although that has not stopped Starfield from delivering avid gamers a robust visible presentation.
We are going to begin off by saying this. Starfield is a sport that may hit PC {hardware} laborious, so mush in order that it now is sensible to us why the sport is locked to 30 FPS on consoles. Count on older {hardware} to battle operating this sport, particularly with out FSR 2 upscaling or with Extremely sport settings. AMD’s FidelityFX Tremendous Decision upscaler is enabled by default in Starfield, and there’s a motive for that.
As we speak, we will probably be testing Starfield with 15 totally different graphics playing cards and can dive deep into this sport’s graphical settings to assist PC avid gamers to realize larger efficiency ranges when taking part in Starfield on their programs. That stated, this sport can solely scale up to now, so do not anticipate GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 480 or Nvidia’s GTX 1060 to ship a robust gaming expertise.
Overview Contents
– Benchmarking Scenes
– CPU Testing and Optimisation
– Reminiscence Testing – Do you want quick DRAM?
– Efficiency Scaling – Presets and FSR
– Upscaling Testing – FidelityFX Tremendous Decision
– Optimised Settings – Graphical Affect and Efficiency
– 1080p Efficiency
– 1440p Efficiency
– 4K Efficiency
– Conclusion
GPU Drivers
When testing Starfield, we utilised the most recent Nvidia and AMD GPU drivers that had been obtainable to us on the time of the sport’s launch. These drivers had been Radeon’s AMD Software program Adrenalin Version model 23.8.2 drivers, and Nvidia’s GeForce 537.13 WHQL drivers for Home windows 10/11.
Take a look at Setup – New Take a look at Rig
This 12 months, OC3D will probably be conducting new sport testing and GPU evaluations on a brand new take a look at system. Due to Corsair, Intel, and ASUS, we now have created a brand new testing system that can enable us to correctly take a look at new graphics playing cards and the most recent PC releases. This technique options Intel’s i9-13900K processor and a ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming motherboard, with all different parts coming from Corsair.
Our new take a look at system is powered, cooled, and operated utilizing Corsair parts. The OS we will probably be utilizing is Home windows 11, and the case we will probably be utilizing is Corsair’s airflow-optimised iCUE 5000T. We will probably be diving deeper into the {hardware} choice for this new gaming system with a future article, and you may anticipate to see this technique in all of our future GPU and sport evaluations.
System Specs
Under are the total specs of our new GPU/Video games testing system, in addition to hyperlinks to the entire parts that we used.
OC3D GPU/Video games Take a look at System Specs (Affiliate Hyperlinks beneath)
CPU – Intel i9-13900K
Cooling – Corsair iCUE H150i Elite CAPELLIX XT
Motherboard – ASUS ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WiFi
Reminiscence – Corsair Vengeance 2x16GB (32GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Reminiscence
Storage – Corsair MP600 PRO NH 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
Case – Corsair iCUE 5000T RGB
Energy Provide – Corsair HX1500i
OS – Home windows 11
Nvidia GPUs Examined
When testing new video games, we wish to utilise a lot of graphics playing cards to see how properly titles run on each previous and new PC {hardware} configurations. To do that, we utilise a big number of each AMD and Nvidia graphics playing cards, together with newly launch graphics playing cards from Nvidia’s RTX 40 collection to older GeForce graphics playing cards like Nvidia’s RTX 2060.
– Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming
– Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Version
– Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming
– Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 WindForce
– Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Eagle
– Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Eagle
– Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Version
– Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 6GB Founders Version
AMD GPUs Examined
On the Radeon aspect of the GPU spectrum we’re at the moment in a position to take a look at a few of AMD’s RX 7000, RX 6000, RX 5000 graphics playing cards. For good measure, we now have additionally thrown in AMD’s Radeon RX 480, a pre-RDNA Radeon graphics card that continues to be common to today amongst finances PC avid gamers.
– Radeon RX 7900 XTX
– Radeon RX 7900 XT
– Radeon RX 6800 XT
– Radeon RX 6800
– Radeon RX 6700 XT
– ASUS ROG Radeon RX 6600 XT Strix
– PowerColor Radeon RX 6600 Fighter