Bethesda may not add DLSS 3 to Starfield, but this modder will
They claim they’ll have DLSS 3 up and running before the Early Access period ends.
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What you need to know
A popular modder known for adding upscaling features to games that don’t support them officially has promised to bring DLSS 3 and DLSS 2 to Starfield if Bethesda doesn’t.
This news comes afterAMD’s announcement earlier this weekthat it’s the official PC partner and sponsor of Bethesda’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG. This was good news for Xbox players and users of AMD hardware like Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs, as it means the manufacturer is working with Bethesda to optimizeStarfieldon systems built with them and add performance-improving FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2) upscaling to both the Xbox and PC versions of the game. However, PC gamers using NVIDIA GPUs are concerned that Bethesda might not add support for Team Green’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) due to the partnership.
Notably,AMD’s FSR 2can be used by anyone — including folks with NVIDIA cards — so GeForce RTX fans won’t be left out to dry if DLSS isn’t supported. With that said, the image quality of DLSS 2 is generally superior in most games, making it many gamers' preferred upscaler.
Also,DLSS 3, the latest version of the technology that’s exclusive to40 series RTX graphics cards, has a popular feature called frame generation. Frame generation uses Tensor Cores and an “Optical Flow Accelerator” to compare two native frames and then draw intermediate frames with that data. This feature has led to significant performance gains in a wide variety of titles, and since it doesn’t call on the system’s processor, it’s particularly useful in CPU-intensive games (Starfield is very likely going to be one of those).
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The aforementioned modder is named PureDark, and they’ve brought DLSS 3, DLSS 2, FSR 2, and/or Intel’s Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) to several PC games, including Skyrim, Fallout 4, Elden Ring, Jedi Survivor, and The Last of Us Part 1. You can find some of PureDark’s mods on theirNexus Mods page, though many of them are currently only available to subscribers on theirPatreon.
PureDarksaysthat they should be able to get DLSS 3 working in Bethesda’s new game before theStarfield Early Accessperiod ends, with an independent DLSS 2 version that users of 20 and 30 series NVIDIA RTX cards can use coming after “depending on the situation.”
I actually use PureDark’s upscaling mods for Skyrim, as my load order is full to bursting with tons of thebest Skyrim PC modsand anything that can even slightly raise my FPS is helpful. They work great, and users of their DLSS implementations in other games have reported huge performance boosts there as well. I expect their mods for Starfield will be just as useful, though I still hope Bethesda adds DLSS support officially so there’s no need for PureDark’s expertise.
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Starfield looks like it’s going to be one of thebest PC gamesof all time, offering RPG fans an experience that they’ll be playing for years to come.Starfield preordersare live and available for Xbox and PC, as areStarfield-themed Xbox controllers and headsets.
Starfield
Starfield boasts one of the most impressive, interactive worlds galaxies we’ve seen in gaming, but that level of sandbox freedom may come at the cost of performance. We’ll have FSR 2 to counter that, and thanks to PureDark, we’ll likely also have DLSS and even XeSS available as well.
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Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).
