autotldr@lemmings.world
on 11 Sep 2023 19:30
nextcollapse
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Starfield is one of the most demanding games on PC that we’ve seen recently, with even the RTX 4090 paired with AMD’s latest Ryzen 7800X3D just about hitting 60fps on average at 4K with all the settings maxed out.
As reviewers and testers scramble to figure out why Starfield is so heavy, the experts over at Digital Foundry have discovered some obvious differences between AMD and Intel / Nvidia systems.
“If you’re on Intel and Nvidia you’re getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD GPUs in a way that’s completely out of the norm,” explains Alexander Battaglia in a detailed 32-minute tech analysis of Starfield on PC.
In my testing, I’ve found the RX 6800 XT can beat the RTX 3080 in a variety of games, but 46 percent is a far bigger margin than normal.
Starfield director Todd Howard was asked why Bethesda hadn’t optimized the game for PCs during a Bloomberg interview last week.
That answer hasn’t satisfied the many who are wondering why Starfield doesn’t play as well on their Nvidia and Intel systems, which account for the vast majority of PC gamers in Steam’s hardware survey.
The original article contains 630 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
djsoren19@yiffit.net
on 11 Sep 2023 19:33
nextcollapse
Don’t worry though, Todd Howard himself said that Bethesda definitely did a lot of work on optimizing Starfield. This is all still the fault of the end users, who just need to “upgrade their hardware.” Just ignore the decrepit Gamebryo engine that still has all the same old bugs and quirks that it’s had for nearly two decades.
Jaysyn@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:23
nextcollapse
No! It's Creation Engine 2! Ignore that it's just Gamebryo with yet another new coat of paint!
Virkkunen@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:52
collapse
Unreal engine 5 is just Unreal engine 1 with yet another new coat of paint, what's your point?
Just because the initial release date of an engine is decades old, doesn't mean the actual engine is. Game engines get updated and fitted with new features and capabilities on top of what's there already, Devs don't waste time rewriting the engines from scratch on each new version.
djsoren19@yiffit.net
on 12 Sep 2023 15:58
collapse
The issue with Gamebryo is more that key bugs are just not getting fixed. How long have NPCs walked away mid-conversation? How long has enemy AI just found itself stuck without taking actions. How long have companions been getting stuck in doors and blocking your path?
The frustrating part isn’t that they’re reusing the same engine. It’s that they’re endlessly tacking on more shiny baubles, without ever fixing issues that have been present across all of their games. Hell the newest bauble they added, the new facial animations, are already breaking down in bizarre ways.
At this point, it feels like there’s so much technical debt from half-implemented features that starting from scratch or licensing an engine from someone else might be the best route forward.
Which is probably the platonic ideal of "damning with faint praise."
Stovetop@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 01:54
nextcollapse
I mean, to their credit, the game is relatively bug-free. Still a few oddities here and there and AI that probably needs a tweak or two, but otherwise it’s been stable for me and I’ve not soft locked myself out of major quests…yet…
MoonRaven@feddit.nl
on 12 Sep 2023 02:48
nextcollapse
I’ve had 2 main quest lines that completely broke. The first I could fix with commands, the other one I could not. So consider yourself lucky so far.
Unaware7013@kbin.social
on 12 Sep 2023 11:43
collapse
Out of curiosity, what were your two issues? The only one I've experienced is groundpounder (side quest) locking in a couple spots. Other than that and CTDs (because I'm under minspec), it's been basically big free for me too.
The AI is straight broken. Combat isn't a challenge because enemies get stuck in ladders, hide behind 2' chairs, and last night I found the last enemy sitting down staring off into space.
Then we get all the dialogue bugs. Invisible companions, people talking to you walking away, facing wrong directions, whatever is happening is facial expressions.
The fact it doesn't soft lock isn't a high bar.
Tathas@programming.dev
on 13 Sep 2023 13:44
collapse
That’s like when you call your insurance company and get sent a survey, “Did we exceed your expectations?”
Well, my expectations were so low that actually speaking to a person means you exceeded them. So sure, I guess.
muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
on 11 Sep 2023 19:38
nextcollapse
AMD being a “partner” is business speak for “AMD paid us a bunch of money because having their brand on our product is a much larger advertising reach than they can accomplish on their own”.
That performance is better on AMD is in no way “bizarre”… it’s exactly what would be expected.
Hyperreality@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:33
nextcollapse
It's unexpected for nvidia users, who have grown used to games being optimised for them rather than AMD users.
ProvableGecko@lemmy.world
on 13 Sep 2023 14:09
collapse
This whole thing is just man bites dog news
Neato@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:39
nextcollapse
PS5 and Xbox Series both run on AMD hardware. Do you really think AMD has the cash to bribe Microsoft?
muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
on 11 Sep 2023 21:17
collapse
Bribery?
Every time you start a game and see an Intel, AMD, Nvidia or other logo outside of the studio or publisher, that’s paid advertising, plain and simple.
Kept getting “your gpu is too old” error messages, although I know others have played it online with 980ti. All the google results said to update windows but I wasn’t even on windows. Gave up on it.
Alto@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:33
nextcollapse
In my mind the 980ti is still only a couple years old, so I went to check.
Eight years. Fuck me, I'm still not used to this starting to feel old thing.
Yeah but they say you can run it on a 1070 and that’s basically the same lvl as 980ti
Anyways I saw 980ti benchmarks out there so i don’t think that’s the problem, it’s some dx12 compatibility nonsense. Which shouldn’t be an issue because it supposedly runs on steam deck.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 00:23
collapse
Why would it running on steam deck negate a dx12 comparability issue…
It would be a factor when trying to use a recent Mac, they don't have x86 processors.
x86 processors are the default architecture for literally every other PC manufacturer, as well as PC games, which is why you wouldn't normally pull it into question.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 21:13
collapse
I’m well aware :p been dealing with the whole Rosetta thing for a while at the company I work for.
Ok maybe I will do a Wendy’s dual boot so I can try to play it. I love oblivion so much and I just want to play TES in space
Ethanice@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 21:37
nextcollapse
I Uninstaller graphics drivers on my boyfriends pc and reinstalled them manually to get that fixed. GeForce experience install wasn't working.
Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca
on 12 Sep 2023 01:48
collapse
I get the same error on the same hardware. Luckily, I have a steam deck I can play it on while the issue (hopefully) gets resolved in Proton. It doesn’t run very well on the steam deck, though. But it is playable.
lemmylommy@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 19:48
nextcollapse
Don’t worry, there will be plenty bugs left for AMD users as well.
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 20:13
collapse
The worst that game suffers from are duplication glitches
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 00:21
collapse
It’s not even a close comparison, Nintendo games look like ass because they have a max resolution of 1600x900 and 30fps, add in the texture resolution of things in game as well and it’s obvious why PC games often run “worse” also… They have one console they release on instead of the literally millions of possible different PC configurations
It’s not even a close comparison, Nintendo games look like ass because they have a max resolution of 1600x900 and 30fps, add in the texture resolution of things in game as well and it’s obvious why PC games often run “worse” also…
Did you account for the fact that Nintendo was developing for massively underpowered handheld hardware? And not significantly more powerful Xbox Series consoles? And actually made their games to fit the strengths and limitations of their target hardware?
They have one console they release on instead of the literally millions of possible different PC configurations.
You would have a point...if Starfield ran with decent performance on even the Xbox Series X. You know, the target platform?
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 02:49
collapse
It does run well, at 30fps like they specified, I’m not sure what performance issues being reported youre looking at
...the fact that it has to run at 30fps on powerful hardware despite having nothing to show for it?
To put it another way, how the fuck is it not targeting 60 on the Series X? I could understand it for the Series S, but there is little to no fidelity improvements on show like they said there'd be.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 06:00
nextcollapse
Have you literally not seen the game? It is quite pretty at higher settings
Is it prettier than, say, Cyberpunk? Witcher 3? Forza Horizon 5? Last I checked, those are open world games and run at 60fps on XSX.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 13:51
collapse
It is definitely prettier then Witcher 3 lmfao, Cyberpunk is probably prettier however it also ran like shit for everyone and was infamously bad at launch lmfao.
I dunno dude, the next gen patch for Witcher 3 is absolutely gorgeous. Maybe there's less opportunity for the game to show off reflections but damn it look pretty. Kinda hard to compare though as they are going for totally different graphical styles.
I'll give you that Cyberpunk was an absolute mess at launch. It made typical Bethesda jank look muuuuuch preferable by comparison. Perhaps it would be more fair to wait for Bethesda to release a few patches before comparing?
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 13 Sep 2023 18:59
collapse
I can show some of my in game screenshots from Starfield if you’d like, I just want people to actually try the game for themselves for a few hours instead of buying into internet rage bandwagon.
It’s a great game with tons of quests and things to do with minimal game breaking bugs to worry about.
I do have one friend who could never really get into Skyrim/Fallout but he took the plunge into Starfield and has far exceeded my playtime already and loving it, for what it’s worth.
The XSX isn't running full fat Windows in the background for one thing, which adds overhead, for another XSX games can be optimised for the hardware at a level that isn't feasible for equivalent generic PC hardware.
Despite that, the XSX still can't run it at 60, how was generic PC hardware going to fare any better?
Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 04:50
collapse
Most the original comments were about bugginess, which is just bad programming, hence the lack of polish
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 13:52
collapse
Most of the comments were most certainly not about bugginess lol
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 12 Sep 2023 18:14
collapse
Just gotta say, TotK looks amazing at 1440p/60FPS
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 21:12
collapse
My old i7-9700k is on ~50% on all 8 cores, my 3080Ti is on 100% and I get about 70-90fps.
Virkkunen@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:50
nextcollapse
Noo you're not allowed to enjoy the game, the internet people said that Bethesda are terrible developers and the game runs like shit
ALERT@sh.itjust.works
on 11 Sep 2023 21:00
nextcollapse
lemmy guess, you are less than 8 hours in the game?
Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 22:01
collapse
Little over 36 hours. Every setting on the highest it can go
MrMusAddict@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 21:03
nextcollapse
From what I recall from one of their Directs, Digital Foundry corroborated another outlet’s finding that ultra settings (and I think specifically ultra shadows) are unoptimized. Tons of weird frame time jittering, and like a 15% drop in FPS compared to AMD. So, if you have shadows turned to High or lower, that’ll explain it. Otherwise, what they’re saying is an AMD equivalent would be getting 70-80 fps in your case.
DarkThoughts@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 22:19
collapse
My 6650 XT isn't quite the same but I can't even get those framerates with low to medium settings. lol
It's more like 40-75 FPS depending on the location.
dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
on 11 Sep 2023 21:21
nextcollapse
The game runs well on midnrange pcs, but it scales terribly as you move up the stack. It has the problem crysis had.
CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml
on 13 Sep 2023 17:53
collapse
What are your settings?
Transcendant@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 20:16
nextcollapse
It’s not bizarre, as others have pointed out AMD has clearly had a hand in making sure this performs better on their GPUs. One instance could be a coincidence but when you’ve got multiple instances of things being ‘missing’, ‘not optimised properly’ etc for RTX cards, you have to wonder whether it’s a bunch of coincidences or deliberate.
This has taken a lot of shine off AMD for me. They seem to be employing a Russia-esque strategy of “If I can’t improve myself then I guess I’d better make things suck for other people so I don’t seem as bad”
Hyperreality@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:30
nextcollapse
A graphics card company ensuring software performs better on their GPU?
Time to switch to nvidia. They would never do such a thing.
LOL
Nefyedardu@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:35
nextcollapse
AMD has clearly had a hand in making sure this performs better on their GPUs
NVIDIA's entire business model is brand-exclusive proprietary software. Last I checked you can use FSR on NVIDIA but you can't use DLSS on AMD.
ShadowRam@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 21:05
nextcollapse
brand-exclusive proprietary software
But to be fair, nVidia has also been pumping massive amounts of $$$ into R&D in both the Graphics and AI space.
They need return on their R&D investment somehow.
And it's not like they are cutting AMD out of the AI enhanced stuff.
They just aren't going to spend $$$ and effort to help AMD implement their solutions, and AMD doesn't have the hardware to run the AI functions properly.
AMD can implement RTX if they wanted to, nVidia's research papers are out there.
But they can't because they don't have the knowledge of how to implement it.
And it isn't like AMD is sharing with Intel any of their R&D work they do on the CPU side.
JohnEdwa@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 21:06
collapse
DLSS doesn't run on older nVidia hardware either as it's designed to utilize the raytracing and tensor cores of the RTX series. I recall reading somewhere that while it could technically be made to run without them, without the specific cores optimized to do the calculations required it would run terribly. Then again it might just be a blatant lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
FSR on the other hand is designed to run on standard GPU hardware and seeing as the tech is open source they can't exactly hide any code that would break compatibility with nVidia.
Neato@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:37
nextcollapse
That's a pretty bold conspiracy theory. Nvidia outsells AMD by a pretty huge margin. As does Intel in CPUs. What would get Bethesda to deliberately favor AMD tech and hobble Nvidia? That would merely give them a LOT of negative press, as we are seeing now.
The idea of bribery is right out because Bethesda is owned by MS. The idea of laziness is also not great because as above, there's more Intel/Nvidia users so it'd be easier to only prioritize one set of hardware, the most common, if laziness was the goal.
Most likely it's as someone below said: this game was primarily designed around console performance. Both of which, the Xbox and PS5, use AMD hardware. And Bethesda is either too inept or too time-constricted to get it to run well on the primary PC hardware. This is, pretty damn common in the games industry: allowing PC performance to flounder because they are a smaller set of sales.
But MS has no incentive for Nvidia cards to not work well because 99% of PC users are Windows users and most likely run this on Gamepass, an MS product.
JohnEdwa@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 21:16
nextcollapse
Also because you can always lower settings or throw better hardware at the problem on PC so even a badly optimized port should eventually run acceptably. But if you fuck it up on console, you get Cyberpunk on the PS4 and have to spend a ridiculous amount of time and money to make it work.
And this is Bethesda we are talking about, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the PC versions are designed from the get got under the expectation that the modding scene will come to the rescue and fix everything for them no matter how terrible their work is.
Same people Sony does. It isn't about Nvidia. It's about lazy developers not optimizing for PC.
papalonian@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:53
nextcollapse
Feel like this isn't the best take. AMD working with Bethesda to make sure the game works on their card doesn't come close to implying they made sure it didn't work on Nvidia cards. Nvidia should've been working to make sure the game ran well on their cards too.
Nvidia has been pulling the tricks you're talking about for years now, though
BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 21:49
nextcollapse
Microsoft owns Bethesda. Microsoft owns Xbox.
Xbox uses AMD GPUs and CPUs.
So the game being optimised for AMD makes absolute sense for Microsoft.
AMD paying for access to optimise for thier PC CPUs and GPUs makes sense for AMD.
However not optimising the game for Intel and Nvidia does not make sense for Microsoft. This is more likely to be an oversight/typical poor AAA game launch than deliberate play to benefit AMD. Other games like Cyberpunk 2077 for example had problems on CPUs/GPUs, we have selection biase here where there are fewer problems on AMD systems, and also a generally reasonably solid launch.
Its frustrating but most of the issues are optimisation, not game breaking. The experience on Intel/Nvidia systems is good, just not as good as it could be. One of the examples in the article was a framerate of 95 FPS vs 105 FPS - that may have been avoidable, but it's a minor annoyance at best. Some of this (not all but some) is just obsessing over minutia and things that won't affect the player experience.
So basically storm in a tea cup, and much of this the usual post launch technical difficulties that will be optimised with patches. This is why people shouldn't buy games at launch, although so far at least we haven't seen the game breaking bugs that have dogged other AAA titles at launch.
bastion@feddit.nl
on 11 Sep 2023 22:50
nextcollapse
Nvidia does this all the time. If anything, I’d like to see more games focused on AMD graphics, it’s a tactic that AMD as a company has been getting whomped by.
Ideally, though, there would be better support for all graphics platforms, though.
I don’t think it’s deliberate, per se, but Bethesda was clear about who they were partnering with, long ago. If a graphics company is trying to help you optimize for their platform, they aren’t going to be stressing abouy the impact on their competitors.
uberkalden@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 00:26
collapse
Jesus, Nvidia has been doing cut throat shit like this for years.
Jaysyn@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 20:21
nextcollapse
Not surprising, game devs aren’t really testing with Intel GPUs or working with Intel driver devs.
There will probably be a driver fix in a week or two though. Intel seem to be progressing fast.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net
on 11 Sep 2023 21:42
nextcollapse
I want to know how the hell I am lucky enough to not have any real performance or graphical issues…
I’m not even using a supported GPU (1660 Super) and it’s still very playable with the lowest fps being 27 and the highest being about 70.
Outside is on the low end. Interiors are higher, with empty interiors (IE no NPCs) being the fastest. Just dropping a single NPC into a space I am getting 72 fps in drops the frame rate to 50. NPCs aren’t handled by the GPU; they are CPU bound.
My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600x; the exact AMD chip Bethesda lists as the recommended. In fact, other than my GPU, the rest of my system meets recommended requirements.
Edit: I kinda wonder if it’s simply how things are tested in QA. For years, I see users claiming to have high end systems having tons of problems across various games, and I am starting to think if they aren’t simply lying about their specs (which seems an odd thing to do if you want real support), is that they are simply too new and the focus was more on hardware more users use. Going by Steam hardware survey stats, most people have pretty old stuff while only a small fraction are on super high end systems.
Bodongs@lemmy.world
on 11 Sep 2023 22:04
nextcollapse
I’m in. 2070S and also don’t experience what everybody is talking about.
SwampYankee@mander.xyz
on 12 Sep 2023 13:42
collapse
3070ti, Ryzen 3900x - flawless experience with the settings maxed. FSR2 ran fine, but I have the DLSS mod now with the render scale at 80%.
thanevim@kbin.social
on 11 Sep 2023 22:05
nextcollapse
Yeah, I second that. I run the game to a perfectly playable extent, low-to-medium settings, and I have a barely better GPU, 1660-Ti, with a 10th gen laptop i7
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
on 11 Sep 2023 23:14
nextcollapse
I’ve had a similar experience (and similar performance) on my all-AMD rig. There’s slowdown in cities but nothing that makes the game unplayable.
I can’t argue there. Considering how well it runs as it is on this card, it feels like their minimum requirements are way off, and they could have supported some older hardware if they optimized certain systems a little more. I don’t want to make it sound like no effort was taken at all, because… Damn. I’ve seen every release from Morrowind to Starfield as it was at launch, and this is by far the most well built right out of the gate.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 00:17
nextcollapse
It could also be something very specific about how they have their system configured.
Source: Work in tech support and it’s astounding the number of programs and little settings that can break completely unrelated things on a computer
LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 01:11
collapse
I just assume half these people just have the display plugged into the mb.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 02:59
collapse
Bruh you joke but literally I’ve had to tell people to plug their monitor into their graphics card instead of the MB before, including pulling up pictures of what a graphics card looks like in the back of the computer.
LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 04:10
collapse
Yeh exactly. I wasn’t joking unfortunately.
Unaware7013@kbin.social
on 12 Sep 2023 02:53
collapse
Hell, my rig doesn't even meet minimum specs (Ryzen 5 2600 and a RX 570) and other than periodic CTDs (fuck Akila City, that was like every 5 min) its run like a dream.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
on 12 Sep 2023 00:23
nextcollapse
In this thread, people who understand very little about technology and how it works
Jokes aside, the game runs great with the DLSS 3 FG mod installed.
What’s stupid is that a 4090 gets similar FPS as a 7900XTX in this game without the mod. That’s just plain sabotage.
Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de
on 12 Sep 2023 01:26
nextcollapse
You can force it to use resizable bar and get more fps. It just needs to be enabled and it’s such an easy thing for the Bethesda devs to do, yet people need Nvidia profile inspector to enable it. For no reason.
You mean to tell me that enabling ReBAR in the BIOS doesn’t automatically enable it for every game?
Nanabaz2@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 05:47
nextcollapse
Not for Nvidia. Nvidia maintain a whitelist in the driver. But not a blacklist
MooseBoys@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 22:15
collapse
The BIOS setting enables the bus feature in hardware. But the driver also needs to support it.
MooseBoys@lemmy.world
on 12 Sep 2023 22:14
collapse
force it to use resizable bar and get more fps
If this is true, it means the game is designed around a UMA architecture, i.e. xbox. Nobody in their right mind tries to map more than 256MB of CPU memory concurrently for a single frame. Either that or the engine is completely shit at resource streaming (also characteristic of console-first games), and so is relying on the OS to demand-page random resources as needed.
If anyone wasn’t aware, there is a mod to replace FSR2 with DLSS and it is INCREDIBLE for performance if your system supports it. I went from all minimum with 40-50fps to well over my 144 target on medium (indoors) and running okay (60 with some drops) in tough scenes outdoors.
I’m just confused because I have an i9 9900k and a 4070ti, neither are even remotely close to being worked hard and yet I can’t break 50fps. Like half vram usage and maybe 10% CPU/GPU usage. I thought I had it running smoothly, but it’s a smooth 30fps…
SwampYankee@mander.xyz
on 13 Sep 2023 15:09
collapse
Yikes… is your monitor plugged into your GPU (and not your motherboard)?
Lol yeah it’s all hooked up correctly. Just don’t get why it seems to not be utilizing my system efficiently. :/
Hadriscus@lemm.ee
on 15 Sep 2023 01:26
nextcollapse
I have a 4070ti as well and it struggles a bit in NA. Probably under twenty FPS in the most crowded places
SwampYankee@mander.xyz
on 15 Sep 2023 12:18
collapse
Finally took the time to check my performance. I’ve got a 3070ti and a Ryzen 9 3900x, CPU is at ~55% utilization and GPU is ~95% at maybe 40 fps average. That’s at ultra on all settings, with the DLSS mod and a render scale of 80%.
Have the recent driver & game updates helped at all?
I’m an idiot and for the entire year I’ve had my 4k monitor I never enabled the setting on the monitor that allowed it to run at 60hz so I was always locked at 30fps with vsync…
I couldn’t say if the recent update helped as I just discovered this new level of my idiocy yesterday lol
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Starfield is one of the most demanding games on PC that we’ve seen recently, with even the RTX 4090 paired with AMD’s latest Ryzen 7800X3D just about hitting 60fps on average at 4K with all the settings maxed out.
As reviewers and testers scramble to figure out why Starfield is so heavy, the experts over at Digital Foundry have discovered some obvious differences between AMD and Intel / Nvidia systems.
“If you’re on Intel and Nvidia you’re getting a bizarrely worse experience here in comparison to AMD GPUs in a way that’s completely out of the norm,” explains Alexander Battaglia in a detailed 32-minute tech analysis of Starfield on PC.
In my testing, I’ve found the RX 6800 XT can beat the RTX 3080 in a variety of games, but 46 percent is a far bigger margin than normal.
Starfield director Todd Howard was asked why Bethesda hadn’t optimized the game for PCs during a Bloomberg interview last week.
That answer hasn’t satisfied the many who are wondering why Starfield doesn’t play as well on their Nvidia and Intel systems, which account for the vast majority of PC gamers in Steam’s hardware survey.
The original article contains 630 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Don’t worry though, Todd Howard himself said that Bethesda definitely did a lot of work on optimizing Starfield. This is all still the fault of the end users, who just need to “upgrade their hardware.” Just ignore the decrepit Gamebryo engine that still has all the same old bugs and quirks that it’s had for nearly two decades.
No! It's Creation Engine 2! Ignore that it's just Gamebryo with yet another new coat of paint!
Unreal engine 5 is just Unreal engine 1 with yet another new coat of paint, what's your point?
Just because the initial release date of an engine is decades old, doesn't mean the actual engine is. Game engines get updated and fitted with new features and capabilities on top of what's there already, Devs don't waste time rewriting the engines from scratch on each new version.
The issue with Gamebryo is more that key bugs are just not getting fixed. How long have NPCs walked away mid-conversation? How long has enemy AI just found itself stuck without taking actions. How long have companions been getting stuck in doors and blocking your path?
The frustrating part isn’t that they’re reusing the same engine. It’s that they’re endlessly tacking on more shiny baubles, without ever fixing issues that have been present across all of their games. Hell the newest bauble they added, the new facial animations, are already breaking down in bizarre ways.
At this point, it feels like there’s so much technical debt from half-implemented features that starting from scratch or licensing an engine from someone else might be the best route forward.
Indeed. "this would have the fewest bugs any Bethesda game ever shipped with." as said by MS.
Which is probably the platonic ideal of "damning with faint praise."
I mean, to their credit, the game is relatively bug-free. Still a few oddities here and there and AI that probably needs a tweak or two, but otherwise it’s been stable for me and I’ve not soft locked myself out of major quests…yet…
I’ve had 2 main quest lines that completely broke. The first I could fix with commands, the other one I could not. So consider yourself lucky so far.
Out of curiosity, what were your two issues? The only one I've experienced is groundpounder (side quest) locking in a couple spots. Other than that and CTDs (because I'm under minspec), it's been basically big free for me too.
The AI is straight broken. Combat isn't a challenge because enemies get stuck in ladders, hide behind 2' chairs, and last night I found the last enemy sitting down staring off into space.
Then we get all the dialogue bugs. Invisible companions, people talking to you walking away, facing wrong directions, whatever is happening is facial expressions.
The fact it doesn't soft lock isn't a high bar.
That’s like when you call your insurance company and get sent a survey, “Did we exceed your expectations?”
Well, my expectations were so low that actually speaking to a person means you exceeded them. So sure, I guess.
AMD being a “partner” is business speak for “AMD paid us a bunch of money because having their brand on our product is a much larger advertising reach than they can accomplish on their own”.
That performance is better on AMD is in no way “bizarre”… it’s exactly what would be expected.
It's unexpected for nvidia users, who have grown used to games being optimised for them rather than AMD users.
This whole thing is just man bites dog news
PS5 and Xbox Series both run on AMD hardware. Do you really think AMD has the cash to bribe Microsoft?
Bribery?
Every time you start a game and see an Intel, AMD, Nvidia or other logo outside of the studio or publisher, that’s paid advertising, plain and simple.
I haven’t seen any logos launching Starfield. It’s kinda nice actually
Well, maybe. It’s optimised for the Xbox which runs AMD hardware.
the Xbox releases optimized for Xbox the PC releases but optimized for PC… with and :)
Kept getting “your gpu is too old” error messages, although I know others have played it online with 980ti. All the google results said to update windows but I wasn’t even on windows. Gave up on it.
In my mind the 980ti is still only a couple years old, so I went to check.
Yeah but they say you can run it on a 1070 and that’s basically the same lvl as 980ti
Anyways I saw 980ti benchmarks out there so i don’t think that’s the problem, it’s some dx12 compatibility nonsense. Which shouldn’t be an issue because it supposedly runs on steam deck.
Why would it running on steam deck negate a dx12 comparability issue…
Because the issue is proton dx12 implementation which steam deck obviously has some workaround for.
So you’re using Linux?
Yes
Why not lead with that in your original comment lmfao
My original comment said I’m not using windows, what the hell else could I be trying to play it on? Sega Dreamcast?
A mac but yeah the GPU wouldn’t make sense
Not to mention the game doesn't have an ARM release. If the CPU doesn't rule out Intel Macs, the GPU certainly does.
When was their CPU specified?
It would be a factor when trying to use a recent Mac, they don't have x86 processors.
x86 processors are the default architecture for literally every other PC manufacturer, as well as PC games, which is why you wouldn't normally pull it into question.
I’m well aware :p been dealing with the whole Rosetta thing for a while at the company I work for.
Oof. Hope it doesn't impact you too bad
I’ve been running it on my GTX 960. Looks piss poor, but I’ve been able to play without much issue.
Thank you so much for confirming it’s possible.
Ok maybe I will do a Wendy’s dual boot so I can try to play it. I love oblivion so much and I just want to play TES in space
I Uninstaller graphics drivers on my boyfriends pc and reinstalled them manually to get that fixed. GeForce experience install wasn't working.
I get the same error on the same hardware. Luckily, I have a steam deck I can play it on while the issue (hopefully) gets resolved in Proton. It doesn’t run very well on the steam deck, though. But it is playable.
Don’t worry, there will be plenty bugs left for AMD users as well.
Yep, like the Sun not showing up
pcgamer.com/in-starfield-the-sun-literally-doesnt…
Someone tried to argue that this game is as polished as Tears of the Kingdom lol
Ahahahahahaha!
The worst that game suffers from are duplication glitches
It’s not even a close comparison, Nintendo games look like ass because they have a max resolution of 1600x900 and 30fps, add in the texture resolution of things in game as well and it’s obvious why PC games often run “worse” also… They have one console they release on instead of the literally millions of possible different PC configurations
Just a dumb comparison to any PC games
Did you account for the fact that Nintendo was developing for massively underpowered handheld hardware? And not significantly more powerful Xbox Series consoles? And actually made their games to fit the strengths and limitations of their target hardware?
You would have a point...if Starfield ran with decent performance on even the Xbox Series X. You know, the target platform?
It does run well, at 30fps like they specified, I’m not sure what performance issues being reported youre looking at
...the fact that it has to run at 30fps on powerful hardware despite having nothing to show for it?
To put it another way, how the fuck is it not targeting 60 on the Series X? I could understand it for the Series S, but there is little to no fidelity improvements on show like they said there'd be.
Have you literally not seen the game? It is quite pretty at higher settings
Is it prettier than, say, Cyberpunk? Witcher 3? Forza Horizon 5? Last I checked, those are open world games and run at 60fps on XSX.
It is definitely prettier then Witcher 3 lmfao, Cyberpunk is probably prettier however it also ran like shit for everyone and was infamously bad at launch lmfao.
Idk about Forza, haven’t seen it in a while
I dunno dude, the next gen patch for Witcher 3 is absolutely gorgeous. Maybe there's less opportunity for the game to show off reflections but damn it look pretty. Kinda hard to compare though as they are going for totally different graphical styles.
I'll give you that Cyberpunk was an absolute mess at launch. It made typical Bethesda jank look muuuuuch preferable by comparison. Perhaps it would be more fair to wait for Bethesda to release a few patches before comparing?
I can show some of my in game screenshots from Starfield if you’d like, I just want people to actually try the game for themselves for a few hours instead of buying into internet rage bandwagon.
It’s a great game with tons of quests and things to do with minimal game breaking bugs to worry about.
youtu.be/dapJH8y6JxI?si=yEuUzHxHxUzOzZNM this review pretty much sums up my thoughts too, but I’m definitely a Bethesda enjoyer, some people aren’t.
I do have one friend who could never really get into Skyrim/Fallout but he took the plunge into Starfield and has far exceeded my playtime already and loving it, for what it’s worth.
Digital Foundry built a PC using the Series X CPU and a similar level GPU and couldn’t get a stable 60 across the whole game.
Well...no shit?
The XSX isn't running full fat Windows in the background for one thing, which adds overhead, for another XSX games can be optimised for the hardware at a level that isn't feasible for equivalent generic PC hardware.
Despite that, the XSX still can't run it at 60, how was generic PC hardware going to fare any better?
Most the original comments were about bugginess, which is just bad programming, hence the lack of polish
Most of the comments were most certainly not about bugginess lol
Just gotta say, TotK looks amazing at 1440p/60FPS
Starfield looks amazing at 4k/60 fps
And mynintendonews.com/…/digital-foundry-examines-tec…
Tears of the Kingdom literally can’t run at 60fps btw, it doesn’t even hold steady to 30 fps according to the above lmao
Yeah, TOTK had a lot of slowdowns in my playthrough. They’re really pushing the Switch’s limits.
Which is strange, seeing how it is their most recent console.
How so? The switch is 6 years old and was underpowered when it launched.
It makes sense they’d be pushing right up against their own set limits at this point.
Why is it bizarre they clearly put all their effort into making it run on the Xbox and that’s AMD hardware.
Because the author is bizarrely ignorant for something that’s published. Oh wait, it’s 2023. It’s about click through, not accuracy. My b.
It is? Am I doing something wrong? Because I get a solid 60-70 fps at all times on a 3070ti
What CPU are you using? I've read it can be CPU heavy.
Not original dude but
I'm using an i7 11700k and a 1660 super and getting 60fps with occasional drops to 50.
My 3070 is at 99% utilization while my ryzen 5800 is at 27%
My old i7-9700k is on ~50% on all 8 cores, my 3080Ti is on 100% and I get about 70-90fps.
Noo you're not allowed to enjoy the game, the internet people said that Bethesda are terrible developers and the game runs like shit
lemmy guess, you are less than 8 hours in the game?
Little over 36 hours. Every setting on the highest it can go
From what I recall from one of their Directs, Digital Foundry corroborated another outlet’s finding that ultra settings (and I think specifically ultra shadows) are unoptimized. Tons of weird frame time jittering, and like a 15% drop in FPS compared to AMD. So, if you have shadows turned to High or lower, that’ll explain it. Otherwise, what they’re saying is an AMD equivalent would be getting 70-80 fps in your case.
My 6650 XT isn't quite the same but I can't even get those framerates with low to medium settings. lol
It's more like 40-75 FPS depending on the location.
The game runs well on midnrange pcs, but it scales terribly as you move up the stack. It has the problem crysis had.
At what resolution?
What are your settings?
It’s not bizarre, as others have pointed out AMD has clearly had a hand in making sure this performs better on their GPUs. One instance could be a coincidence but when you’ve got multiple instances of things being ‘missing’, ‘not optimised properly’ etc for RTX cards, you have to wonder whether it’s a bunch of coincidences or deliberate.
This has taken a lot of shine off AMD for me. They seem to be employing a Russia-esque strategy of “If I can’t improve myself then I guess I’d better make things suck for other people so I don’t seem as bad”
Xboxes run on AMD GPUS.
A graphics card company ensuring software performs better on their GPU?
Time to switch to nvidia. They would never do such a thing.
LOL
NVIDIA's entire business model is brand-exclusive proprietary software. Last I checked you can use FSR on NVIDIA but you can't use DLSS on AMD.
brand-exclusive proprietary software
But to be fair, nVidia has also been pumping massive amounts of $$$ into R&D in both the Graphics and AI space.
They need return on their R&D investment somehow.
And it's not like they are cutting AMD out of the AI enhanced stuff.
They just aren't going to spend $$$ and effort to help AMD implement their solutions, and AMD doesn't have the hardware to run the AI functions properly.
AMD can implement RTX if they wanted to, nVidia's research papers are out there.
But they can't because they don't have the knowledge of how to implement it.
And it isn't like AMD is sharing with Intel any of their R&D work they do on the CPU side.
DLSS doesn't run on older nVidia hardware either as it's designed to utilize the raytracing and tensor cores of the RTX series. I recall reading somewhere that while it could technically be made to run without them, without the specific cores optimized to do the calculations required it would run terribly. Then again it might just be a blatant lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
FSR on the other hand is designed to run on standard GPU hardware and seeing as the tech is open source they can't exactly hide any code that would break compatibility with nVidia.
That's a pretty bold conspiracy theory. Nvidia outsells AMD by a pretty huge margin. As does Intel in CPUs. What would get Bethesda to deliberately favor AMD tech and hobble Nvidia? That would merely give them a LOT of negative press, as we are seeing now.
The idea of bribery is right out because Bethesda is owned by MS. The idea of laziness is also not great because as above, there's more Intel/Nvidia users so it'd be easier to only prioritize one set of hardware, the most common, if laziness was the goal.
Most likely it's as someone below said: this game was primarily designed around console performance. Both of which, the Xbox and PS5, use AMD hardware. And Bethesda is either too inept or too time-constricted to get it to run well on the primary PC hardware. This is, pretty damn common in the games industry: allowing PC performance to flounder because they are a smaller set of sales.
But MS has no incentive for Nvidia cards to not work well because 99% of PC users are Windows users and most likely run this on Gamepass, an MS product.
Also because you can always lower settings or throw better hardware at the problem on PC so even a badly optimized port should eventually run acceptably. But if you fuck it up on console, you get Cyberpunk on the PS4 and have to spend a ridiculous amount of time and money to make it work.
And this is Bethesda we are talking about, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the PC versions are designed from the get got under the expectation that the modding scene will come to the rescue and fix everything for them no matter how terrible their work is.
From whom does Microsoft source the CPUs and GPUs for every single XBox?
Yep.
Same people Sony does. It isn't about Nvidia. It's about lazy developers not optimizing for PC.
Feel like this isn't the best take. AMD working with Bethesda to make sure the game works on their card doesn't come close to implying they made sure it didn't work on Nvidia cards. Nvidia should've been working to make sure the game ran well on their cards too.
Nvidia has been pulling the tricks you're talking about for years now, though
Microsoft owns Bethesda. Microsoft owns Xbox.
Xbox uses AMD GPUs and CPUs.
So the game being optimised for AMD makes absolute sense for Microsoft.
AMD paying for access to optimise for thier PC CPUs and GPUs makes sense for AMD.
However not optimising the game for Intel and Nvidia does not make sense for Microsoft. This is more likely to be an oversight/typical poor AAA game launch than deliberate play to benefit AMD. Other games like Cyberpunk 2077 for example had problems on CPUs/GPUs, we have selection biase here where there are fewer problems on AMD systems, and also a generally reasonably solid launch.
Its frustrating but most of the issues are optimisation, not game breaking. The experience on Intel/Nvidia systems is good, just not as good as it could be. One of the examples in the article was a framerate of 95 FPS vs 105 FPS - that may have been avoidable, but it's a minor annoyance at best. Some of this (not all but some) is just obsessing over minutia and things that won't affect the player experience.
So basically storm in a tea cup, and much of this the usual post launch technical difficulties that will be optimised with patches. This is why people shouldn't buy games at launch, although so far at least we haven't seen the game breaking bugs that have dogged other AAA titles at launch.
Nvidia does this all the time. If anything, I’d like to see more games focused on AMD graphics, it’s a tactic that AMD as a company has been getting whomped by.
Ideally, though, there would be better support for all graphics platforms, though.
I don’t think it’s deliberate, per se, but Bethesda was clear about who they were partnering with, long ago. If a graphics company is trying to help you optimize for their platform, they aren’t going to be stressing abouy the impact on their competitors.
Jesus, Nvidia has been doing cut throat shit like this for years.
Starfield doesn't even run on Arc GPUs.
Not surprising, game devs aren’t really testing with Intel GPUs or working with Intel driver devs.
There will probably be a driver fix in a week or two though. Intel seem to be progressing fast.
I want to know how the hell I am lucky enough to not have any real performance or graphical issues…
I’m not even using a supported GPU (1660 Super) and it’s still very playable with the lowest fps being 27 and the highest being about 70.
Outside is on the low end. Interiors are higher, with empty interiors (IE no NPCs) being the fastest. Just dropping a single NPC into a space I am getting 72 fps in drops the frame rate to 50. NPCs aren’t handled by the GPU; they are CPU bound.
My CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600x; the exact AMD chip Bethesda lists as the recommended. In fact, other than my GPU, the rest of my system meets recommended requirements.
Edit: I kinda wonder if it’s simply how things are tested in QA. For years, I see users claiming to have high end systems having tons of problems across various games, and I am starting to think if they aren’t simply lying about their specs (which seems an odd thing to do if you want real support), is that they are simply too new and the focus was more on hardware more users use. Going by Steam hardware survey stats, most people have pretty old stuff while only a small fraction are on super high end systems.
I’m in. 2070S and also don’t experience what everybody is talking about.
3070ti, Ryzen 3900x - flawless experience with the settings maxed. FSR2 ran fine, but I have the DLSS mod now with the render scale at 80%.
Yeah, I second that. I run the game to a perfectly playable extent, low-to-medium settings, and I have a barely better GPU, 1660-Ti, with a 10th gen laptop i7
I’ve had a similar experience (and similar performance) on my all-AMD rig. There’s slowdown in cities but nothing that makes the game unplayable.
Still, it should be optimized.
I can’t argue there. Considering how well it runs as it is on this card, it feels like their minimum requirements are way off, and they could have supported some older hardware if they optimized certain systems a little more. I don’t want to make it sound like no effort was taken at all, because… Damn. I’ve seen every release from Morrowind to Starfield as it was at launch, and this is by far the most well built right out of the gate.
It could also be something very specific about how they have their system configured.
Source: Work in tech support and it’s astounding the number of programs and little settings that can break completely unrelated things on a computer
I just assume half these people just have the display plugged into the mb.
Bruh you joke but literally I’ve had to tell people to plug their monitor into their graphics card instead of the MB before, including pulling up pictures of what a graphics card looks like in the back of the computer.
Yeh exactly. I wasn’t joking unfortunately.
Hell, my rig doesn't even meet minimum specs (Ryzen 5 2600 and a RX 570) and other than periodic CTDs (fuck Akila City, that was like every 5 min) its run like a dream.
In this thread, people who understand very little about technology and how it works
Sounds like about 80% of Starfield discussion at the moment.
I mean it’s an Xbox game made with AMD.
Bizarre indeed
well really it’s a PC game
My 3080 is bottlenecks by my ancient CPU and it runs fine for me.
Jokes aside, the game runs great with the DLSS 3 FG mod installed.
What’s stupid is that a 4090 gets similar FPS as a 7900XTX in this game without the mod. That’s just plain sabotage.
You can force it to use resizable bar and get more fps. It just needs to be enabled and it’s such an easy thing for the Bethesda devs to do, yet people need Nvidia profile inspector to enable it. For no reason.
You mean to tell me that enabling ReBAR in the BIOS doesn’t automatically enable it for every game?
Not for Nvidia. Nvidia maintain a whitelist in the driver. But not a blacklist
The BIOS setting enables the bus feature in hardware. But the driver also needs to support it.
If this is true, it means the game is designed around a UMA architecture, i.e. xbox. Nobody in their right mind tries to map more than 256MB of CPU memory concurrently for a single frame. Either that or the engine is completely shit at resource streaming (also characteristic of console-first games), and so is relying on the OS to demand-page random resources as needed.
If anyone wasn’t aware, there is a mod to replace FSR2 with DLSS and it is INCREDIBLE for performance if your system supports it. I went from all minimum with 40-50fps to well over my 144 target on medium (indoors) and running okay (60 with some drops) in tough scenes outdoors.
Running on a 2070.
I tried that and saw no difference unfortunately.
I’m just confused because I have an i9 9900k and a 4070ti, neither are even remotely close to being worked hard and yet I can’t break 50fps. Like half vram usage and maybe 10% CPU/GPU usage. I thought I had it running smoothly, but it’s a smooth 30fps…
Yikes… is your monitor plugged into your GPU (and not your motherboard)?
Lol yeah it’s all hooked up correctly. Just don’t get why it seems to not be utilizing my system efficiently. :/
I have a 4070ti as well and it struggles a bit in NA. Probably under twenty FPS in the most crowded places
Finally took the time to check my performance. I’ve got a 3070ti and a Ryzen 9 3900x, CPU is at ~55% utilization and GPU is ~95% at maybe 40 fps average. That’s at ultra on all settings, with the DLSS mod and a render scale of 80%.
Have the recent driver & game updates helped at all?
I’m an idiot and for the entire year I’ve had my 4k monitor I never enabled the setting on the monitor that allowed it to run at 60hz so I was always locked at 30fps with vsync…
I couldn’t say if the recent update helped as I just discovered this new level of my idiocy yesterday lol