AMD’s exclusive partnership with Bethesda has fans outraged over Starfield performance
In a recent announcement, AMD revealed that they have exclusively partnered with Bethesda to bring FSR 2 to Starfield, but not NVIDIA’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS.
Update 06/29/2023: The modder PureDark, responsible for bringing DLSS to Jedi Survivor, has pledged to bring DLSS support via a mod to Starfield before the end of the Starfield Early Access period.
Fans have been left outraged after AMD announced in a YouTube video that Starfield’s performance has been optimized for AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics cards. This announcement leaves Intel processor and NVIDIA graphic card owners skeptical about Starfield’s performance on their PC builds.
AMD has exclusively partnered with Bethesda for Starfield, meaning that Starfield will only have native support for AMD’s FSR 2 (FidelityFX Super Resolution) upscaling technology, which is designed to improve graphical fidelity and performance.
However, recent AMD exclusive games like Jedi Survivor have encountered massive performance issues at launch, which used FSR 2. Following AMD’s announcement, Starfield fans have expressed concerns that Starfield could see similar issues at launch, especially if AMD does not provide any native support for NVIDIA and Intel systems.
For Jedi Survivor, modder PureDark implemented support for NVIDIA’s DLSS 3 via a mod which led to a massive increase in the game’s performance. As a result, many Starfield fans are hoping that a modder will provide support for NVIDIA’s DLSS and Intel’s XeSS in Starfield if AMD and Bethesda don’t.
Fortunately for NVIDIA and Intel owners, FSR 2 is compatible with most modern graphics cards. Unfortunately, it may not offer the best performance compared to AMD’s competitors as The Verge’s Tom Warren pointed out. “DLSS is massively superior to FSR 2, so I don’t understand why Microsoft / Bethesda would sign a deal that will lock DLSS out of Starfield.”
Historically, games which have had AMD exclusive partnerships have never gone on to provide support for DLSS or XeSS. This has caused an outcry from the gaming community, who believe that Starfield will be similarly left unsupported. However, AMD has not definitively ruled out support for Intel’s XeSS upscaling feature or NVIDIA’s DLSS on Starfield at launch.
You can see the full announcement below.
Perhaps in response to the backlash on social media, AMD might consider confirming if Starfield will launch with support for its competitors.
Until AMD reveals otherwise, make sure to check your system is compatible with the Starfield system requirements, or secure your copy through a pre order of a standard or Constellation edition. Alternatively, pick Starfield up cheaply with the Xbox Game Pass.