this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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While I'm probably in a small demographic here, I'm sitting with a perfectly capable PC, not a gaming supercomputer or anything but a healthy upgrade from standard, and when I started hearing about Starfield I got really excited.
...then I saw all this stuff about compatibility and performance, and when I tried to see where my equipment stood, I was left with the impression that if I wasn't a PC building enthusiast, it was going to be hard to figure it out, and if my computer wasn't pretty high end and new, it was probably going to struggle.
And now hearing more about the performance issues, I've basically given up even considering the game based on possible performance and compatibility issues.
I'm playing it in a 9th Gen i5 and a 1060ti. Runs fine.
What do you play on. The reality it’s pretty serviceable and it is one of those games where FPS != performance or experience.
I’ve played most of the game at 27-35 fps. It’s been mostly fine as long as I’m not obsessing about the fps counter. I frankly just turn it off unless something bad starts happening.
I’ve even figured out ways to get it mostly at 30fps on a pretty low power card.
At those settings, you might be seeing a consistent 30fps. You tend to get used to that if that's what you see all the time.
What people in somewhat higher tier hardware are seeing is an average >60fps, but with sudden dips down below 35fps. That inconsistency is very noticeable as stutters. This seems to happen even all the way up to an rtx4090 running at 1080p. The game seems to hit some bad CPU bottlenecks, and no CPU on the market can fix it.
No doubt I agree. I can definately get the game to do similar with KB+M. The response time, sensitivity and precision of a mouse for camera movements is much faster and more accurate than a game pad.
Honestly one of the biggest things i did was just use a controller. It smoothed the game out quite a bit. Its then using motion blur (slightly) and the stick acceleration to smooth out the frametime and the input delays make it much less noticeable. Honestly ive become convinced thats the primary way Bethesda tests their games. I started doing this with Fallout 76 for the exact same reasons.
Those sudden movements seem to cause the system to have to render or re-render and re-calculate parts of the world faster with a KB+M. THus the dips and stutters become more noticeable.
Im not excusing Bethesda here. I think its bullshit. I think they should optimize their code. At the least they should goddam acknowledge the issue and not try and act like this is normal. Its not. Im also merely trying to portray a way that you can play and enjoy this game without totally raging out in frustration because Bethesda cant really do their job, assuming this is a title you wanted to see and enjoy and are willing to "support" a company with such a rich history of putting out products like this. Its not really new. Skyrim on PC has CTD issues on release, Fallout New Vegas did too, along with a crash once ram usage exceeded 4GB because of the 32-bit barrier. Modders had to fix that shit first. Heck fallout 4 was heralded as a success because it at least was playable day 1.
27-35fps is low enough for me to wait 5-10 years and brute force it with future hardware, if it's on sale cheap enough. It shouldn't run this badly for how little it impresses graphically.
Thats what I am saying though. If you dont have an FPS counter up, the way this game runs at 27-35 is still smoother than 60-75 on other titles (ie: RDR2).
I mean, you do you, but the raw FPS numbers arent necessarily accurate depictions of how the game runs. Its like they fuck with frametimes and the like. Which makes sense considering if you unlocked or removed vsync from old titles physics would get wacky, lock pick minigames were super fast etc etc.
That said, i have noticed with a number of Bethesda releases that certain aspects run smoother on a controller. Fallout4/3/NV i was able to brute force performance to run fine on KB+M in 90% of areas. It would still get choppy downtown etc. It was when 76 came out that I tried playing just on a controller. Something about the stick acceleration when moving the camera was much smoother, it made the overall experience better. The same applies here. As soon as I just moved to a controller, its really pretty enjoyable. It doesnt seem to be a "fast twitch" style game like say....CS:GO, Battlefield etc are.
Though I would totally understand if some folks arent going to make such concessions. Just seems to me Bethesda is one of those studios that really only playtests/develops for controller based play despite "supporting" alternative inputs.
FWIW I already have a controller for other games (like Elite: Dangerous or other flight games). So its no biggie for me to change up.