Fallout series

Bethesda Game Studios released Starfield over a year ago, marking its first new IP since acquiring Fallout in 2004. The game has been criticized for being tedious and underperforming despite advancements in graphics and scale. Initial patches for performance issues were slow, leading to modding community involvement. The Rev-8 patch added a ground vehicle but little else, while the recent DLC, Shattered Space, introduced new quests and a performance-enhancing patch. Starfield features three primary gameplay zones: space, terrestrial exploration, and urban areas, with Akila City being particularly demanding on hardware. The game has ambiguous minimum system requirements, specifying a Radeon RX 5700 or GeForce GTX 1070 Ti for the GPU. It offers four graphics quality presets and is resource-intensive, especially at higher resolutions. Performance testing revealed that high-end setups manage 1080p without issue, but mid-range setups often dip below 60 fps, leading to noticeable stuttering. Intel's GPU architecture struggles with Starfield, particularly the Arc A770 at 1440p. High-end GPUs like the RTX 4070 and RX 7800 XT perform adequately at 4K, but upscaling techniques are necessary for playable frame rates. The game typically utilizes four heavy threads and four medium-load threads, with Ryzen 9 9950X and Core i7 14700KF handling requirements well. Starfield incorporates various upscaling technologies, including AMD's FSR, Intel's XeSS, and Nvidia's DLSS, but none are the latest versions. DLSS 3.5 is used for upscaling and frame generation, while FSR is limited to version 3.0. Upscaling does not significantly enhance performance on lower-end devices, but frame generation improves experiences for handheld and laptop users, albeit with input lag. The visual quality hierarchy ranks DLSS highest, followed by XeSS and FSR. Starfield offers four graphics presets, with the best performance achieved using Medium or High settings while adjusting Shadow Quality, Volumetric Lighting, and GTAO Quality for better frame rates. Overall, while performance has improved since launch, it still falls short, particularly in the new DLC, with visuals often not justifying frame rates.