Starfield AMD partnership means native DLSS is unlikely but mods will save the day

Bethesda recently announced an exclusive partnership between Starfield and AMD, and while it might suit those with Radeon graphics cards, PC players with Nvidia graphics cards might be left in the dust slightly. The game will feature FSR 2, which is AMD’s AI-powered resolution upscaling software, however, there’s little chance that the game will feature DLSS, which is Nvidia’s version of the same rendering process.

The partnership between Starfield and AMD didn’t come as a huge surprise, after all, AMD provide the GPU chips found inside both the Xbox Series X and PS5. Not that Starfield is necessarily coming to PS5, but that’s a story for another time. However, the game’s absence from PlayStation platforms will surely drive attention to the PC platform. The likely lack of DLSS is going to throw some players off, especially as the Starfield system requirements don’t look particularly simple to run. AI upscaling would help this issue out slightly, but some might be thinking it’s not going to be possible with their hardware.

Grumblings in the community note how AMD exclusive games often have performance issues and lack optimisations. For example, this Reddit thread begins with a depressing exhale: “most AMD exclusives sucked performance wise.”

While the partnership might imply that Nvidia gamers will have no access to any resolution upscaling software, that’s not true. Those with Nvidia graphics cards (with DLSS enabled graphics cards) will have access to FSR 2, meaning that all Starfield players will be on equal footing at launch. Despite this, there’s still a resounding feeling within prospective Starfield players who are aware that those with RTX 40-series graphics cards will feel slightly hard-done. Nvidia’s DLSS and ray-tracing is no doubt superior to AMD’s equivalents, and Starfield will definitely feel the impact of this.

There’s no word if the game is going to receive DLSS eventually, but it doesn’t seem likely at this rate.

PureDark, a prolific Skyrim and Fallout modder, added the Nvidia rendering process to both those games, alongside Jedi Survivor too. Not only that, but they’ve stated that they will “manage to get at least DLSS3 support in the Early Access 5 Days” for Starfield with support for DLSS 2 added later. As a Bethesda game, it will surely have some of the best mods we’ve ever seen, and performance related add-ons will surely contribute to this.

One thing that we haven’t heard much about is Starfield’s ray tracing situation. With no mention of the feature in AMD’s partnership reveal, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that the game will feature it. Once again, this could be a task for the modders to implement.