Eagerly awaited: Starfield, Bethesda’s new role-playing game with a space opera atmosphere and plenty of ore to mine with lasers, is set to officially release on September 6th, but those who bought either the Premium or Constellation editions can play it now. Thanks to the very first mod released for the game, PC gamers can also enjoy improved performance on Nvidia GeForce GPUs.
Recently, controversy arose over Bethesda’s decision not to support DLSS in Starfield. The game can still offer some upscaling benefits thanks to AMD’s FSR, which unlike DLSS works on all modern GPUs and doesn’t necessarily require a GeForce RTX card. Frank Azor apparently confirmed that AMD did nothing to block DLSS support in Starfield.
With early access unlocked for players who bought premium editions, the controversy is no longer relevant. An “upscaler mod” is already available for download on the Nexus Mods website, giving players the option to replace FSR2 with competing upscaling technologies such as DLSS or XeSS.
Nvidia DLSS2 is an upscaling algorithm that only works on GeForce RTX GPUs, while Intel XeSS technology supports both Intel Arc GPUs and competing cards from AMD or Nvidia. The Starfield Upscaler Mod can be installed from the following It follows the simple instructions of its creator but requires another mod called Upscaler Base Plugin. However, DLSS3 frame interleaving technology is not currently supported.
Once installed, the Starfield Upscaler Mod will replace the game’s default settings for FSR2. According to the mod creator, there are no longer specific quality levels; Instead, players can adjust the render scaling ratio in the game settings. The performance improvements depend on how GPU limited the system is. If the FPS number doesn’t increase significantly, it’s probably because the game is CPU limited.
Starfield will be released on Xbox consoles with a fixed frame rate of 30 fps. PC users should rejoice in greater customization options and higher performance, as long as their hardware can handle it. Compared to other current gaming blockbusters, Starfield has more manageable system requirements, with the exception of the high SSD storage space requirement of 125 GB, which applies to both the minimum configuration and the recommended configuration.
Bethesda games are known for providing a rich playground for modders to experiment with. Skyrim in particular stands out as one of the most heavily modified games ever released for PC. Starfield marks Bethesda’s first original IP in 29 years, and early reviewers are mostly promoting this new space RPG experience, which director Todd Howard once described as “Skyrim in space.”