This guide will show you the best Starfield Graphics Settings. These Graphics settings will help you balance out the performance without losing quality and the visuals in the game.
Starfield Best Graphics Settings
Starfield is finally out on PC, and everybody is enjoying the game to the fullest. There is no doubt that Starfield is an awesome RPG. But that doesn’t stop it from having performance issues. In fact, Bethesda has not optimized Starfield at all. Despite the listed requirements for the game not being that high, even people with RTX 3070s and 3080s are having a tough time getting desired FPS. For this reason, we thought of showing you the best graphics settings for Starfield. We tweaked and played around with these settings until we got a solid 50-60FPS on 2K (1440p) in the game. You can use the same settings on 1080p as well.
- Borderless Full Screen: On
- Window Size: Your Default Monitor Resolution
- Dynamic Resolution: Off
- Render Resolution Scale: 65%
- Graphics Preset: Custom
- Shadow Quality: Medium
- Indirect Lighting: High
- Reflections: Low
- Particle Quality: High
- Volumetric Lighting: Medium
- Crowd Density: Medium
- Motion Blur: Off
- GTAO Quality: High
- Grass Quality: Medium
- Contact Shadows: Medium
- VSync: Off
- Upscaling: FSR2
- Sharpening: 70%
- Enable VRS: Off
- Film Grain Intensity: 0
- Enable Depth of Field: Off
I tested the game on a PC consisting of a RTX 3060 Ti, Ryzen 5 5600x, 32 GB of DDR RAM, and the latest Nvidia Drivers. I managed to get more than 50 FPS most of the time on 1440p resolution. For the test, I picked Akila City, which is one of the most intensive locations in Starfield. Anyway, let’s move on to the detailed performance analysis.
Starfield PC Performance Analysis
Let me start by saying that Bethesda has not optimized Starfield at all. It is something that cannot be fixed with one or two patches. I have tested multiple settings on 4 different GPUs. The highest being the RTX 4070 Ti, and I can confirm that unless you are using something like the 4080 or the 4090, you won’t be able to enjoy the game on higher resolutions. Starfield heavily relies on FSR to make itself playable on medium-end cards. I got that 50+ FPS on 1440p because I was using FSR 2, and my Render Resolution Scale was at 65%. This means the game was actually running at a way lower resolution. I have tested FSR in the following video:
As I said, the best GPU I tested Starfield on was the RTX 4070 Ti, and even on 1080p, I couldn’t manage to get a constant 60 FPS during combat without FSR 2. That is how bad the optimization is. For my GTX 1060 peeps, yes, you will be able to play the game, but you will have to sacrifice a lot. With everything set to Low and FSR on 62%, a GTX 1060 would be able to run Starfield at around 40 FPS with occasional drops to 35 during combat. I am obviously talking about 1080p. GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1650 people, don’t even bother.
The good thing is that all these performance numbers I just talked about are applicable to the Early Access of the game. The official release is yet to happen, and there is still some chance of Bethesda dropping an awesome performance patch, eliminating some performance issues.
Anyway, I will be keeping a close eye on the performance of the game after the official launch. If I notice any chances, I will try to tweak the settings again.
If you think this guide has helped you, then let us know in the comment section below. Also, you can check out our other guides on Starfield. Good luck.
That’s all, folks!
Last Updated on September 3, 2023
Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.