Starfield is being optimized for AMD hardware

No love for Nvidia, it seems

If you were hoping to get the most out of your Nvidia RTX 4000 graphics card when Starfield launches, you might be out of luck. It turns out developer Bethesda will optimize the anticipated sci-fi RPG for AMD’s hardware instead.

This comes from a recent YouTube video from AMD itself, which says that the Starfield studio has partnered with the tech giant to make the game run better on systems that use its processors and graphics chips. This is great news for those of you who have a PC containing Team Red’s products. Less so if you’ve been putting your stock into Nvidia’s offerings.

Todd Howard himself said that the team is excited to be partnering with AMD, getting the game to run as best as it can on that particular hardware. He adds that Starfield will use FSR 2.0 (AMD’s upscaling technology that offers an alternative to Team Green’s DLSS). Nvidia fans may feel they’re being shafted a little on this front, especially for those who were hoping to get their money’s worth from a 4000 series.

However, for console users, this may be beneficial. The Xbox Series X/S runs on AMD technology, both in terms of CPU and GPU. Given that Starfield is an Xbox exclusive, many of you will likely choose this system for the game anyway. For PC users with an Nvidia card, obviously you’ll still be able to run the game (depending on your spec). But it does sound like Bethesda has already sided with Lisa Su and her team.

That said, FSR 2.0 is more open-source than DLSS. This means you can still make use of the image processing algorithm even if you have an Nvidia graphics card.

Starfield will launch on PC and Xbox Series X|S on September 6.

Andrew Heaton

Andrew has been a gamer since the 17th century Restoration period. He now writes for a number of online publications, contributing news and other articles. He does not own a powdered wig.

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