Starfield performance benchmarks and our thoughts

With the launch of the game once seeming light years away, it’s released into early access. Let’s go over the latest Starfield performance having had extended access to a review copy of the game.

Starfield is Bethesda’s latest game and with how it’s been received by audiences – we’re in for a good ride. With nearly eight years of development building a solid foundation for the game, alongside the development team “checking under every rock,” we’ve already seen a smooth launch for the game. However, it would be unwise to get complacent. Modern game launches are plagued by a series of recurring bugs, graphical errors and performance issues that have marred titles that would otherwise have been considered great. While many are experiencing a bug-free launch, there are those suggesting otherwise.

How good is Starfield’s performance?

We tested Starfield’s performance on three different gaming rigs – the first was on a RTX 3070 FE with Ryzen 5 3600, which we considered a top tier system. In terms of frame rate, we were experiencing an FPS that topped High settings hovering at around 60FPS consistently.

Starfield RTX 2060 performance benchmarks

We next tested out the game with an RTX 2060 and Ryzen 7 3700X, having a go at getting benchmarks which might have suited the lower end of the spectrum.

• High – 29 Average FPS
• Medium – 37 Average FPS
• Our performance graphics settings – 40 Average FPS
• Low – 45 Average FPS

They weren’t the worst results, and we experiencing frame drops every so often. Realistically, having taken the game for a spin for while on this rig, gameplay was manageable, though it was clear that the GPU wasn’t quite up for the task. We made sure to use our performance graphics settings for this as we knew we weren’t meeting the system requirements. However – this does prove that you might not need the beefiest GPU to run the game, thankfully.

Starfield RTX 3090 performance benchmarks

Finally, we rigged up the game with an RTX 3090 paired with the same Ryzen 7 3700X. We were aware that the processor might be bottlenecking the 3090 at time, especially as Starfield is such a CPU intensive game. Here are the results we found:

• Ultra – 65 Average FPS
• Our high fidelity graphics settings – 76 Average FPS
• High – 73 Average FPS
• Medium – 82 Average FPS
• Low – 89 Average FPS

As you can see, the game runs fairly smoothly and with a frame rate consistently above 60 – the game is definitely playable. However, the RTX 3090 is a pretty expensive and beefy graphics card. Normally, you’d expect much better performance. Of course, the CPU we used is largely responsible for this, and had you had a more up-to-date processor you’d probably experience better results.

We’re going to be keeping an eye out for the latest on Starfield’s performance, though in the mean-time you might consider picking up the best GPU or CPU for the game.