Improving Starfield CPU Performance: DLSS 3, CPU Optimization, Best Settings & Min-Spec Testing

[@jasonberger8979]

Huge thanks for all the Starfield coverage, guys!

[@dann5480]

You're welcome buddy.

[@DavideDavini]

@@dann5480LOL. 😂

[@christophermullins7163]

​@@dann5480keep it coming.. Dan's the man.

[@nuketube2650]

I second this!

[@Kev-.]

I don't really come across many channels doing CPU optimization guides these days, compared to GPU optimizations. Great video that helped me out a lot and hope to see more content like this from you guys in the future.

[@bb5307]

Theres usually not much you can do to improve cpu performance besides overclocking or buying a new cpu unfortunately. Sometimes you'll find a mod that improves it a bit but that's about it.

[@Anankin12]

Because usually there's no need. Unless you have a top of the line GPU, usually a 5600X will deliver about the same performance as a 7800X3D. And if it doesn't, basically all CPU optimization settings will degrade you experience by a lot while giving back little performance. This game seems to be the exception.

[@Sargnort]

Seems to be changing fast with new releases this year. Cpu is now just as important in many new games.

[@tringuyen7519]

@@SargnortAgreed. Seeing 75% utilization on all 12 threads of the Ryzen 2600 was surprising. Imagine what the game would do with Intel’s P & E cores.

[@Sarmathal]

That's because if you have at least a 6 core 12 thread CPU you can run pretty much every game well released these days. This is the only game with such high CPU requirements.

[@MaybeMizuki]

After watching the Buildzoid rambling video, I would LOVE to see you guys doing a memory bandwidth test for Starfield. Ideally testing a ryzen with and without 3D cache and an intel one. To cover if more L3 cache is helping, if the infinity fabric speed is limiting on AMD and scaling on intel. But I know you guys are already super busy with this launch haha

[@spoots1234]

I would like to see them compare a 7800x3d on 4800mhz ddr5, like super cheap CL 46 Vs a 7700x on 6000mhz at actually affordable timings, like CL36 to see if it's worth spending money on ram or just pump it into the CPU cost

[@zorbakaput8537]

@@Navi_xoo Why is it when people say no offence that is invariably exactly what they achieve.

[@Knorrkator]

HUB already responded to this suggestion on twitter saying memory has not a huge impact on performance

[@livingthedream915]

Throw in some quad channel ddr3 platforms too

[@SaiakuNaSenshu]

i posted almost this same thing on the original video

[@ImAltair1]

Your Starfield coverage so far has been super helpful, keep up the great work!

[@ChrisP872]

Frame generation technology will probably result in publishers putting even less effort into optimization in games than even the upscaling tech did.

[@adridell]

Fake performance and graphics has already started, Starfield activates FSR at all graphics presets, this is exactly what people feared back when Nvidia announced DLSS, that it would ultimately not improve game's performance because developers would rely on these technologies to hit their performance figures. Ultimately no technology that hardware companies release is useful if not used as intended, DLSS should stay out of performance charts and should be treated as an option to improve performance, but official performance charts should only be done at native resolution and with frame generation off, once we begin implementing and normalizing their presence on charts there will be no going back, we will rely completely on these technologies and have to live with them for the best or the worst.

[@Dani-kq6qq]

Frame gen and upscalers are optimization technology. We should expect other optimization techniques without using this technologies, but this tech is also optimization.

[@bb5307]

upscaling allows devs to skimp on gpu budget optimizations and frame gen allows devs to skimp on cpu threading optimizations. match made in heaven.

[@kishimotodashoppee8632]

@@Navi_xoo the mod comes with reflex tho

[@joeykeilholz925]

Capitalism is having that effect generally already

[@proesterchen]

I really hope you check out how this game scales with different RAM speeds, as per Buildzoid's speculation.

[@mannyc19]

This !

[@yzfool6639]

...is ridiculous.@@mannyc19

[@PookaBot]

Yeah I'm on a 3700x and thinking about a 5800x3d... but now I'm concerned that the slower DDR4 might turn into a bottleneck and hamstring the CPU.

[@TheEpic55]

@@PookaBot no, the extra cache will make up for slower ram. I just did similar upgrade myself and I must says it's totally worth it. Huge performance gains across all charts

[@decegrease]

​@PookaBot yeah dude you'll notice a MASSIVE increase in almost every game with that upgrade. Went from a 3600x to a 5800x3d and I saw a massive increase across the board. Very few games won't notice a difference but some will see 30-50%, like getting a new GPU. It's wild

[@mhh3]

What improves Performance the most is not to play at launch day. wait ~3-4 months

[@Saieden]

I would be surprised if it's that fast.

[@Lil.Lon3Ly]

Or wait for mods to patch it

[@liquidsunshine697]

its Bethesda so never

[@Loxly-ti4sq]

When did the last time AAA dev ever improve performance of their game substantially? expect 10-15% at best and am being generous here. The cycle repeats just like any other demanding AAA games in the past, you just brute force them with way better hardware 1-2 PC generations after release.

[@ZeroGravitas187]

While it is by no means perfect....this game launch has been one of the smoother Bethesda launches IMHO. R7 5800, and 3070Ti. The only bug that I have come up regularly is an audio-output problem...where sometimes NPC speech doesn't get output by my DAC upon game startup, and I have to fully exit the game and change my audio settings, or just plain reboot the system. It is greatly annoying, but lots of the bugs. This is nothing like the buggy mess of Fallout 3 RTM. I was around for that.

[@cogthusiast1150]

Makes you wonder, what type of PC were the developers working on while making the game over the last few years?

[@mastapdog]

Cinematic ones

[@TheScrubmuffin69]

You started with a sentence and ended with a question

[@yzfool6639]

@@TheScrubmuffin69 Not a native speaker, huh? Questions are one type of sentence in English. Sentences that ask questions are called interrogatories. Sentences that provide statements that are true or false are called declarative sentences, for comparison example.

[@mannyc19]

Simple. The kind of system that greatly enhances humans become Extremely LAZY while writing software code.

[@nostrum6410]

intel cpu with amd gpu

[@annagramgaming8934]

I have a i7-7700k, and this guide really helped. I was playing with overall settings and it was difficult telling what would help me. Thank you!

[@Vsevolod3788]

@ilnursagidullin4387 Вот именно, тут может помочь только анинсталл. Апгрейдить проц ради такого отсталого лет на 10 уг - себя не уважать.

[@MrZlocktar]

@ilnursagidullin4387 No fucking way it can't run fine on 7700k.. that's insane.

[@SkeeziOS]

A lot of people on the gamersnexus are asking for a benchmarking of the x3d chips, I really think it would be interesting for a comparison between the 5600x and 5600x3d to see how big the uplift is as well as 7000 and 7000x3d chips

[@borealeone]

~17% difference between zen4 zen4x3d at same clock (11% with typical clocks reachable by both). So it is non zero, but not very high as in msfs/PUBG/tarkov and the other exceedingly bad optimized titles

[@merlingt1]

I think Daniel Owens did this comparison

[@Jaycy845]

I have a 5800x3d… the performance is still not great.

[@SmarterThanAll]

​@@Jaycy845If you're using a 5800x3d then you aren't CPU limited you're GPU limited.

[@thepathnotfound]

@@Jaycy845I’ve got the 5800x3d/6750xt and see 60FPS.

[@garytallowin6623]

Shadows have always traditionally been rendered on the cpu for creation engine so its not odd that lowering them makes a visible difference to cpu performance.

[@oropher1234]

Shadow rendering distance has always been a CPU intensive setting on any game. Shadow resolution is not though.

[@ArtisChronicles]

​@@oropher1234 but that's kind of the point, the way Bethesda has developed their games have always done it this way.

[@PookaBot]

Yeah I remember turning shadow quality down on my good 'ol Phenom II x6 1090T. But that was way back in the Direct X 9 days, I think from 11 on it's more on the GPU now.

[@KillFrenzy96]

Realtime shadow rendering is expensive on the CPU because it's essentially a 2nd camera rendering the (usually simplified) scene. This multiplies the draw calls which is very expensive on the CPU. Shadows can sometimes be more expensive on the CPU than the main camera because the shadow camera can look down towards the entire area.

[@mikfhan]

Usually for Skyrim/Fallout I would half the ini shadowmap texture resolution until it looks ugly, then reduce shadow draw distance since that means the shadowmap is spread across a smaller area (therefore its perceived resolution/crispness improves again) rinse and repeat until satisfied, and replace grass/foliage shadowing with ambient occlusion since that is run by the GPU mainly. And also reduce object/NPC/clutter distance + density of grass and dynamic shadow casting lights as much as you can live with so number of object draw calls for CPU is reduced as well. I really wish CPU/GPU impact was shown for each setting in modern games with more accuracy in how much it's affected. Not 100% there yet.

[@_Romank]

Wish that recomended specs actualy meant something. Like 1440p solid 60fps. So that companies had an actual standard to adhear to for game performance.

[@Driftwood420]

I'd be interested to see benchmarks based around memory bandwidth since ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking has loosely explored this area and the game seems to be more sensitive to this than the CPU's themselves

[@csabauri351]

I'd like to see that benchmark too. Buildzoid is a smart guy.

[@mademedothis424]

Hm. I am not sure how this would be true in a scenario where every core in your CPU is reporting 70-90% utilization at 40 fps. It may improve those traversal stutters, though.

[@DDRPriest]

I remember Cyberpunk having pretty large increases with better ram timings and speed. Most games don't care, but when they do, they really do. lol

[@cptnhero6116]

damn.... Starfield Performance is like working for Amazon they are demanding everything from you, while you get almost nothing

[@fabrb26]

yes, but at the end, it just work.

[@Descenter1976]

Yes... For Amazon@@fabrb26

[@BranBillington]

Game looks like it came out on the 360 lol

[@TheSkyrocketYT]

Whilst it is just work at the end of the day, Amazon is constantly checking on employees, walking around checking, timing you on how much you scan or input, you can't even talk whilst working, they tell you to be quiet like you're in school. Just overly excessive.@@fabrb26

[@mynickisalreadytaken]

@@BranBillington you clearly did not play it for yourself at all lol.

[@gottahavitvt]

I enjoy your content in general but this is by far one of the best videos you've done. You should really do a version of this not specific to starfield and talk more about this topic and general guidelines about what hit's CPU vs GPU. Too many video just say "oh you're CPU bottlenecked, turn down you settings", same for GPU.

[@Jelfish416]

FO4 was (is) very dependent on RAM frequency. Also I don't have Starfield but assume it has similar ini files to previous Bethesda games with separated-out settings for shadow draw distance vs shadow resolution - as well as shadow fade distances. A 'nuclear option' was also editing uGridsToLoad, though this could affect scripted events (stuff doesn't load until you're much closer - and so certain things don't trigger properly). Density of ground clutter was iMinGrassSize. FOV can be tweaked - lowering could help performance. You can disable TAA. Some settings seemed to appear in both the regular ini file and the prefs ini file. Or you needed to make a custom ini file. You might consider it more modding territory as it's not accessed directly through the in game menu, but also it doesn't require downloading anything, just editing a text file.

[@gaurd3]

Got a top of the line gaming rig. Still watching. Good stuff. KNAWLEDGE!

[@ScotsmanGamer]

nobody asked or cares what your rig is unless it helps with how this game runs

[@erb34]

Nice work... thank you. I have a MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X which I can overclock a tiny bit, 32GB of DDR4 ram and a Ryzen 5 5600 CPU. I get to download Starfield this week and will do all I can to massage a good experience. Would love all the latest kit but not an option at present. Thanks for all your suggestions.

[@AdalbertSchneider_]

Wow Tim, only now I am realising how brutal work you are doing for the gaming comunity. And thats saying me - more of a HW-man that doesnt play almost any games. 👍

[@Derael]

DLSS certainly helps. I didn't measure the FPS performance, but on 4060 I haven't noticed any issues whatsoever on 1440p high settings. Downloaded the mod from the Nexusmods, copied a couple of files, and it runs like a charm (Though I'm using a 7600x processor). Haven't noticed any drop in quality whatsoever, and FPS feels extremely smooth.

[@TheSometimeAfter]

Honestly AAA gaming is an absolute embarrassment... Studios trying to normalise 30fps is shameful

[@rabbychan]

they wanna earn as much money possible with the smallest effort possible and gauging how far they can go with the consumers without losing profit.

[@valentinvas6454]

@@rabbychan Well Starfield is in Gamepass so it likely won't bring huge profits. Anyway if other companies keep this up then they will start to lose profits too. We are seem to be approaching a point where 1 generation old low to mid range GPUs can barely play a game at 1080p medium. Just imagine the frustration of somebody that was using an aging GTX 1060 or RX 580 for many years and they were not satisfied with their performance anymore so they upgraded a few months ago to something like an RTX 3060 only to get framedrops into the 20s at 1080p high in Starfield. A game that doesn't look particularly impressive by 2023 standards.

[@mycosys]

SecondLife players be like "12fps is good, right?"

[@pattrickmerete]

I heard Blackmyth Wukong which looks more impressive graphically would run well with 1650 or RX 460. I guess small indie devs know better how to optimize their game.

[@valentinvas6454]

@@pattrickmerete Or more like Indie devs feel like they can't half ass a product because they don't have a massive positive reputation like many AAA studios where many people will blindly buy their games no matter what. I was very impressed with how Atomic Heart runs despite being the first game of a Russian studio and Lies of P is also very great. I averaged around 170 FPS at 1440p max settings with an RX 6900 XT.

[@TechTesters]

Lovely video as always!

[@TerraWare]

Very good video. I took a look at a Ryzen 2600 I have out of curiosity and to check on the Nvidia driver overhead using a 4090 and 7900xtx. There was very little difference in fps which was rather surprising. Was expecting there to be more of a difference.

[@michubern1444]

What resolution? 4k doesnt need much cpu power

[@TerraWare]

@@michubern1444 Check my latest video if you want to see it but if not I did 1440P/High running through New Atlantis and the little combat part in the tutorial part of the game with a 6800XT/7900XTX and 4090. I also put the 6800XT vs the 4090 at 4K just for the heck of it in the end.

[@jadedrivers6794]

Awesome idea to test this! Looking forward to the 5800X3D video!

[@mroutcast8515]

On Kreet - the worst performance I have is spot where I look on the ground with few rocks and few tiny bushes of foliage with like 20m view distance. Then I look into massive vista with ton of objects and far view distance and get +14 fps. Something is very off with this game.

[@maegnificant]

Texture size

[@mroutcast8515]

@@maegnificant textures are not performance taxing. Also interiors have much higher texture variety because there is such a huge variety of objects and interiors have a lot higher fps while imho looking far better then most of taxing exteriors. Some serious BS going on. I remember Fallout 4 was rendering shadows below ground surface - which was butchering performance for people. Wouldn't be surprised it this shit renders to of shit below hillside ground level - wouldn't be surprised with Bethesda and their garbage Creation Engine.

[@maegnificant]

@@mroutcast8515 they are if you don't have enough VRAM. Also RAM speed does seem to have a lot of impact on this game

[@maegnificant]

@@mroutcast8515 and yes the engine is not well optimised.

[@mroutcast8515]

@@maegnificant Dude, if you watch HUB previous videos, you'd no it doesn't go over 8GB VRAM allocation even ton to of it to spare on RTX 4090. It hovers mostly around 6-7GB allocated (and in this case likely actively used).

[@crispybottom]

13:36 Check with Smart Access Memory turned on and off, for me (5600x, RX6800) there was a significant (5-10FPS) gain with it ON even in New Atlantis so it's worth checking out as i think it might be the reason people are reporting much higher performance on AMD. Also the game likes high speed, low latency RAM (though this just might be because on Ryzens better RAM = more CPU performance)

[@nicksterba]

With Starifeld's performance, at least it takes advntage of all of your CPU's cores when playing. I have a Ryzen 7900 and Starfield likes to use all 12 cores, so while my fps hasn't been crazy high, it has been very smooth and stable for me. Can't wait for patches to come out for this game.

[@tbreeze79]

my 5950x and 6950xt is running this game very well.

[@gokublack8342]

@@tbreeze79 But will your 5950x outperfom a 5800x3D with the cache? x3D was touted as the best gaming CPU last gen. Also out of curiosity what is "Very Well"? I have the same GPU as you just the x3D instead of the 5950x

[@tbreeze79]

@@gokublack8342 cache isn't the main for this game. This game is "cpu intensive ". The more cores the better. A 16 core vs a 8 core. End of story.

[@gokublack8342]

@tbreez79 I doubt more cores will make that much difference the cores aren't even being maxed out I suspect frequency and memory will make the bigger difference

[@tbreeze79]

@@gokublack8342 i have the game and runs great for me. Have a good one.

[@looseyourzlf]

you made a great job identifying every detail on a wider scale. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

[@Dr.D00p]

Just download more cores and more Ghz. Worked for me many a time.

[@djsnowpdx]

Gamers who paired a 3070 or higher with a 2600 or weaker had it coming. CPUs are so important to gameplay, as well as general PC use. It just doesn’t make sense to me to spend so much on a GPU while letting your CPU fester like that.

[@SilverforceX]

Seems to scale very well to memory latency & bandwidth, so the bottleneck in the 2600X could be just a lot of memory waiting.

[@SKHYJINX]

With my 2080Ti I went for 40fps capped and 2880x1620p DLDSR scaling, inGame 80% scale, holds 40fps very well with HUB Quality preset. Just shy of 1440p scaled to 1600p and treated with DLDSR AI

[@dbunik44]

or it could be better optimized...

[@mycosys]

Whats ur CPU?

[@SKHYJINX]

@@mycosys 10th gen 10850K at 5.1Ghz

[@OlaJustin]

It's fun to play around with all the different techniques... I do something simular in BG3 but since its an easy load for the GPU I can run DSR (edit: turns out it was DLDSR @ 2.25x) on a 1440p monitor, and then DLSS quality on that to get something like 1900p. WAAAY better than any AA in the game and looks miles better (if you really look) than only 1440p and DLSS Quality. Also it keeps the GPU feeling like it's existence in this world matters.... well, acually it's me feeling like buying a 4090 was sane in any way... Deep down inside I know it was a bad, bad decision. :) Haven't thought about trying DLDSR... or it might be that that I'm acually running. Gonna have to research that one. (OK, it was DLDSR @ 2.25x I was running.)

[@SKHYJINX]

@@OlaJustin The dsr filtering slider with DLDSR...tiny bit different from 0-100% normal filtering. DLDSR filtering... consider 50% the actual middle point zero..... Left from 50% is Sharpness, Right from 50% is Smoothness 👍

[@jddes]

I'm glad you give some solid advice in the current market: "For gamers looking to improve Starfield's performance in CPU limited areas of the game, the best option is to cry."

[@ForzaE2]

I don't even have the game yet (gamepass) but I know what settings I am going to use thanks to you guys.

[@RLT12]

Great video cant wait for the cpu comparison video

[@YataLocK]

I'm a simple man. I see a HUB video, I click and like 👍

[@kreygasmed7314]

This is one of two hubs I watch everyday

[@digizilla164]

Yes the.....hub.

[@StoriesFromSkyrim]

I just ordered a new CPU after I examined my CPU (Ryzen 5 3600 - which is the recommended on the specs) and GPU (3080 - above recommended) usage for Starfield; the same CPU limiting also crops up with VR but I have been avoiding upgrading. I finally clicked the order button. Then I found this video which essentially confirmed my thinking and ultimate decision - thank you.

[@wile123456]

You should start using GPU busy like gamers nexus for cpu limited tests like this

[@mojojojo6292]

GPU utilisation % already gives us that information

[@FrazzleCat]

The Mario Paint-esque music at the end is so nice. Also, this is a comment for the algo. Thanks for the info. I got a(n unfortunate) laugh at the "cry" comment. I used to run on such limited systems and I'm very familiar with that particular scenario.

[@solocamo3654]

Memory bandwidth and CPU IPC have really been the biggest requirements for this engine since Morrowind.

[@gokublack8342]

I don't remember people struggling this much to run Oblivion or Skyrim

[@solocamo3654]

@@gokublack8342 We didn't, this game is a disaster currently.

[@jqwright28]

Man you guys are slaying it with this coverage. Thanks for all this work that's actually worth it, instead of just making videos complaining that the game isn't a space travel sim.

[@LoukasMayn3]

I gave the video a like just because he said the best option is to cry.. haha had me going there. Appreciate the vid as always boys.

[@jako997]

Great video. even on my ryzen 7 3700x cpu im getting around 30-45fps. I hope Bethesda does some Performance optimization patches soon.

[@braderley]

I’ve got a 12700k & 4070 and I was sure I’d have a good experience at 1440p lol not so sure after this last week, I’m hoping there’s a nice day one patch

[@Akkbar21]

I have essentially the same setup (3080 12gb, 12700k, ddr5600) and ya, it’s hard to get to 60fps. Frankly, I’m bored by the game. The enemies are dirt dumb and just stand around and do nothing. I haven’t been playing single player games for a long time. Do NPCs still act as dumb as this? Reminds me of 1995.

[@ressult943]

Maybe pay the 5$ and use the DLSS 3 FG mod from Puredark? I have a 13600k, 4070 and 32 gb ddr 5 5600 with a fast nvme ssd. With the Mod even when im in New Atlantis performance is good. I get about 90-130 fps on high settings in 1440p. Also you only have to subscribe once, even when you are not subbed the mods get updated. One thing also, the Ultra Mode is currently bugged and Nvidida GPUs perform really bad on it, just play on high it looks the same. @@Akkbar21

[@Navi_xoo]

@@Akkbar21 Bethesda RPG still sell like hotcakes so they haven't changed their strategy in 15 years. Unfortunately the writing went down the drain so it feels worse than it was.

[@impuls60]

Dont be lazy so overclock the ram to 6000Mhz+. Often you just run at Xmp and bump the ram speed to 6000Mhz. Its often 2 settings and save. On an old motherboard update the bios first since the later revisions has done wonders for ram speed oc.

[@Akkbar21]

@@impuls60 Samsung nand doesn’t quite like to be overclocked, plus stability is one of my #1 concerns.

[@AdnanKhan-be9dr]

Cheers guys! Was not expecting another Starfield video this soon!

[@patricknguyen9282]

Did you try any overclocking and/or memory tuning? Would've been interested to see how much difference that potentially would've made

[@twanheijkoop6753]

Buildzoid speculated that starfield scales good with faster memory bandwidth. Like most other creation engine games.

[@JamesTechJackin]

Great content as always fellas!! Salute from the USA!!! Keep doin ya thang!!!

[@shieldtablet942]

Hey Tim, I have some thoughts about interpreting the CPU load. I worked at code optimization and HPC a while back and I think I can help. First thing is that you may have a single *thread* loaded but not a 100% single core! Most modern OS schedulers jump the thread around after a set timeout that it is allowed to run. Then something takes over and the thread has to be allocated elsewhere. So the single thread performance is still a factor but it won't show up on those metrics! The bottleneck will do 1/12 the load, on all CPU threads. Some OSs - for some stupid reason - think it is better to even the load to help with thermals... Some do scheduling on single CCDs, preferring HT for higher latency, etc. These will not fit every task best and IIRC Zen+ has precision boost but not preferred cores, so the scheduling will be very basic. Another reason why when games were poorly threaded, you could disable HT and have better perf. The scheduler really was that dumb. I have done multiple tests where you know a task that runs for 5min is single threaded, if you actually pin them, they will be faster anywhere from 10-30%. ST deficit will be larger on cores that take a while to boost or don't have shared last level cache. Like when Phenom came out and it was pretty slow with CnQ because the cores took a while to bump frequency and they were clocked independently. So here pinning would help a lot. But modern stuff like Zen 2 or Haswell, it jumps frequency so fast and the LLC is so big it is hardly 1% difference. Now, you may ask: "before, these XYZ games would do 100% on a core". Well yes, but game dev 10y ago was doing bad things that were OK in console. They knew the resources they had available, so they would pin threads or have locks that would busy the CPU 100% despite doing no work. That was the whole " your CPU can't run this because it's X threads", which is where you'd find that stuff.

[@ArtisChronicles]

This is really good information, hope it gets noticed.

[@N0N0111]

Great to see you guys are spreading the words of mods giving a much desired player experience with Starfield. Hope to see more mods video's as there are some more that improve gameplay and even responsive of interactions.

[@aakudev]

Strangely, my cpu is 10% and gpu 80-90% utilised. 3300x, 6700, 32g ram. Getting 60 fps but sometimes it freezes for couple of seconds.

[@studentlogan]

I recently swapped from a 2700x(2070s) to a 5800x3d, and while i didnt notice any substantial fps increases, the smoothness and spikes were MUCH better from a cpu change alone, particularly in cities and locales with alot of foliage.

[@studentlogan]

@@rockapartie yeah have a new card on the way but the CPU came in quicker so I figured I'd throw it in as is and see if there was any change. I considered just moving to am5 but the 58003d is so cheap right now I figured that and a beefy GPU will get me by another cycle or 2

[@stephankane5879]

Can you do a video testing ram and ssd speed's and maybe overclocking the ram to see how much of an improvement that makes?

[@baumstamp5989]

11:40 did u just say "aside from crying" in the most dry manner possible??? 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 i cant stop laughing

[@PixelShade]

I really hope Bethesda will continue to optimize and not use DLSS3+ and FSR3+ as a crutch to solve poor performance... I cannot fathom how demanding Starfield is. It's a beautiful game, don't get me wrong, but when playing a 16 year old game like Bioshock, realizing how amazing that game looks, yet with a 17 year old 8800 GTX we get similar performance in Bioshock as we do with in Starfield on a RTX3060.... With other words Starfield requires ~1500% (according to techpowerup) the performance compared to bioshock. Yet I find it funny that neither simulation quality or visuals have improved all that much. New Atlantis is ultimately an enclosed space, I did go outside the boundaries just to witness the horrors of the haphazardly designed exterior. It wasn't designed for players to go there, so there's literally no reason NOT to enclose New Atlantis to room-like spaces like Bioshock, while having far distance mesh as a background. Old school sensibilities in a modern game. That city should run at 120fps. Not 40-50fps on a Ryzen 2600X... It's honestly absurd, and not really acceptable in my opinion. We need more old school sensibilities during development, targeting modern hardware. Not wasteful modern development practices...

[@redjaypatalinghug1090]

I agree with this. This game is more like a lazy take on new generation hardware. Gaming Studios should focus more on optimizing their games and not just cram visuals just for the sake of creating a visually appealing game. Bethesda should take cues from Doom. That game is so optimized and at the same time as visually appealing.

[@PixelShade]

​@@redjaypatalinghug1090 Definitely :) But then again, Id Software also have a long history of extremely talented Graphics Engineers... Bethesda has never pushed those boundaries... But in Starfield I find it almost comical how very little performance we actually get. Being a game developer myself I feel like there must be tons of code and graphics instructions running unnecessarily in the background, running at every tick(update) of the game engine. Although I am making a 2D game, all my code is boundled into smaller groups and disengaged when not in use, I also reduce polling rate of certain code because they don't need to run them every tick in the engine. I feel like that can't be the case with starfield, it feels like everything runs ALL THE TIME. xD

[@redjaypatalinghug1090]

@@PixelShade yeah it basically boils down to design choices at the programming level. I'm a software developer myself and when I watched HUB's video on Starfield on the different GPUs, all I can conclude was how badly this game was done. Like you have very high end hardware and most of them were outputting mediocre (at best) fps.

[@MasterCraftX8]

Wish you touched on the free DLSS 2 mod and if there are any visual benefits or noticeable artifacting compared to FSR2

[@SimonZerafa]

Memory Bandwidth limits? 🤔🤷‍♂

[@Jh3454-df5vm]

I wasn't expecting it to hit my system as hard. Got a sandwhich style mini itx case, so i was limited on cpu. 5700x paired with 7900xt and 32gb @3600.

[@RetrOrigin]

Considering this game seems to max out all cores, would be interesting to see how much of an impact core count has.

[@bimsbarkas]

The cores were only at about 75%. I wonder if they only use 4 threads.

[@RetrOrigin]

@@bimsbarkas Yeah, should probably have phrased my post better. Doesn't necessarily seem to 100% max out all cores (which may or may not have to do with GPU bottlenecking in certain areas), but seems to spread Core usage evenly across all cores.

[@dylon4906]

yeah, I'd like to see if my upgrade from a 5600x to a 5900x was valid in this game

[@nap-nezumi]

​@@RetrOrigininterestingly this is only sort of the case for me. I've got a 13700k and it absolutely pins 4 logical cores to 100%, and then the rest hover around 60-70%.

[@azmc4940]

Judging from CPU benchmarks I could find online, it doesn't seem to make much difference. E.g. pcgameshardware has the 9900K come in slightly slower than the 2600X, which would point to a memory bandwith issue, as the 9900K has 8 cores but only supports 2666 MHz memory.

[@lexsanderz]

You should be using preset C or D for any resolution under native. Preset F is for DLAA

[@M_Ryze]

The preset explanations are kind of confusing. What do those letters even mean?

[@Charun1982]

I would love to see a comparison between the 5800X and 5800X3D as that's the upgrade i'm currently considering to go with my 4090. Thanks for all your grade A content and hard work guys!

[@mojojojo6292]

If you have a 4090 why are you cutting corners on the CPU. Even the 5800x3d will bottleneck it. You should be looking at 7000 series X3d

[@donloder1]

@@mojojojo6292 you never know, I paired my 13900ks with 6700xt as I'm saving for a 4080ti. tho the rest of the specs are on the higher end, a discrete gpu will always be the most expensive part. honestly, a 4090 could pay for my current system minus the storages.

[@Cz82]

​@@mojojojo6292probably doesn't want to buy a new mobo and ddr4 to move from am4 to am5

[@hideCarson]

@@mojojojo6292 I have a 4090 and a 7800x3d and it runs very well, would recommend.

[@justinthematrix]

@@mojojojo6292ikr I have a 3080 and 5800x. My next step is just a new build tbh. Faster ram and all that

[@adink6486]

My 5800X3D was around 70% and up to 80% all cores I believe in the first city. My FPS was around 55-65 with a 3090 1440p HUB quality DLSS mod with reshade.

[@andred.2335]

5800x3d is able to handle 90ish fps in New atlantis, 7800x3d around 100fps. Not too Bad for am4 owners! 😊

[@pedroferrr1412]

@@andred.2335 with the same cpu, and an 3080 12gb i have 70 to 80 in New Atlantis, using DLSS MOD, with A preset. Some high and ultra settings, and shadows, in medium.

[@willianjohnam]

You guys along with Digital Foundry are top tier when It comes to good content!

[@Aggrofool]

what about LTT

[@cheeks3211]

digital foundry did not do a good job compared to Gamers Nexus.

[@zach9533]

@@cheeks3211i would say they cover different things and both do a great job overall

[@cogthusiast1150]

​@@Aggrofoolthey're top of the pile

[@A.Froster]

DF is not exactly what would I call unbiased but sure , i would go with GN instead

[@BeardedLearza]

got a 3600, but i am already looking at upgrading to a 5800x3d anyway so it makes a natural choice to do this still going to give the game a bash even at low settings, should be fun.

[@AppleFillet]

really hyped to play at 60fps on medium on my 3080/5900x (not really)

[@AcousticBlu3]

sadly 5900x cannot hit 60fps at all times in this game....

[@minn5459]

@@AcousticBlu3 bethesda is a joke of a studio

[@vincentvega3093]

What are you expecting on last gen midrange hardware 😂

[@Augusto9588]

Running it on High with a 3070ti/3700x just fine Eventual drops to low 50s in big cities, but 80+ most of the time during actual gunplay

[@AcousticBlu3]

Other benchmarks suggest otherwise, that 3070ti drops under 60fps even on 1080p low, and im not talking cpu bottleneck, im talking 99 percent gpu usage@@Augusto9588

[@KyleKazama]

this video help a lot tq.. most channel doesnt really tackle cpu bottleck, im upgrading my pc part by part so i got good gpu now but still using my old cpu.

[@shaunmclaughlin5167]

You’re a bunch of mad lads for putting in such hard work! Thanks!

[@matdid5735]

Seems that at least the starfield engine makes good use of multi core: it would be interesting to see if going from 6 core(12 therads) to 8 core /16 threads would change the results

[@mariuspuiu9555]

if it did you would have seem much better CPU performance. it mostly like still has 1 or 2 main threads while spreading some minor workloads to other cores, as expected from such an old engine.

[@SmarterThanAll]

​​@@mariuspuiu9555That makes literally no sense. If all the threads are loaded they are all doing equal amounts of work. The actual conclusion to make is that the 2700x with all threads being slammed is still not enough for Starfield in New Atlantis. I expect other parts of the game to be mostly fine. Stop talking about old engines. Some of the best and most widly used engines in the world are older than CE.

[@TheLazyGamers]

I can say I’m my personal experience, having played this game with the same GPU (6700 XT), on two different CPU’s (AMD 3600x & amd 5700x), going from the 6-core CPU to an 8-core CPU was the difference between playing at 30fps vs a somewhat unstable 60fps (which is fixed with VRR).

[@mariuspuiu9555]

@@TheLazyGamers i think that's mostly the improved single core helping, much more so than the extra 2 cores considering the 5600x results.

[@mariuspuiu9555]

@@SmarterThanAll "That makes literally no sense. If all the threads are loaded they are all doing equal amounts of work." - no game engine in existence does this. so please don't BS us with technical things you don't understand.

[@jrherita]

Hope we see some ram scaling testing for SF. Thanks HU!!

[@JB-zk7gi]

speculation seems to suggest a memory bandwidth bottleneck

[@vincentvega3093]

Good luck improving ryzen cpus.

[@BravenTyler]

What you say a 5900x to 5800x3d would result in performance for this game and many others? Since i currently stream on this PC as well, paired with 7900xt on 1440p with 3600mhz ram speed ddr4. Is it even worth it? Mind you i stream off gpu encoder, so i see a marginal 2-8% cpu usage in stream, so i normally see a 10 frame or so difference on stream gaming vs off stream. Anyone with some tech knowledge would be appreciated 👍

[@MahaveerEnterprises-eg5ry]

This game doesn't even looks good/ graphically intensive, It is total waste

[@pattrickmerete]

I enjoy Cyberpunk looks more. I might play that again once they drop the DLC. I heard CPunk is better now.

[@Mako2401]

Thank you for the CPU optimization, love it !

[@MoosePlus]

I have a 7800x3d and a 4090 and it still gets CPU limited in new atlantis. Unacceptable for how unresponsive and lifeless the AI is.

[@pedroferrr1412]

@@Navi_xoo is a trash engine, but a very good game, i cannot stop playing it. I have a 3080 12G and 5800X3d, using DLSS Mod, with A preset, at 1440p, with only shadows in medium,and most settings in High with 2 in ultra, one of them is people density i think, and i have between 70 and 80 in Atlantis, in most other places, between 90 and 120. With a very flat frame time, almost no spikes. Of course i have my computer optimized, memory speed and latency, the max that the cpu can take. Card always at 98 to 99%, and cpu overs between 30 to 50%.

[@NyangisKhan]

@@pedroferrr1412 IDK why big studios waste years of time and millions of dollars to create a buggy mess instead of just working on UE5 or something. Making just a good and stable game will bring more than 5% players that'd make up for that 5% royalty anyways.

[@niks660097]

@@NyangisKhan UE5 is a bigger performance hog, look at UE5 games relesed this year, unless EPIC optimized its lumen and other tech, all UE5 game would run at 720p on ps5/xbox X and 420p on series s like immortals of aveum or remenant, devs using UE5 are not responsible for optimizing engine..

[@NyangisKhan]

@@niks660097 It's way harder to optimize a game on an inefficient engine that actually sucks. Also it'll have way less bugs on UE5. And it'll automatically enable features like DLSS. When it comes to engine development *experience* is literally everything. And the guys at Epic games has that. They optimize their engines for almost every genre of games and as much as possible. And it's open source so there is always a workaround.

[@riannair7101]

Ryzen 5900X paired with RX 7900XT , no problem run in 1440p New Atlantis zone ultra detail , native graphic!💪

[@taylorp3685]

I really hope fsr 3 works well and is implemented well into this game. The 150w rtx 3070 and 12700h do a really good job at 1600p 62% fsr and medium settings. The game looks really good even on medium settings. With gsync on I’d say my lowest frame rate in the busiest areas is around 50 fps + and so it is still very smooth to play. Outside of the major cities and dense forested worlds the frame rate averages 80 and above. I’d like to see fsr 3 boost me to 65 and above on high settings with 75% scaling. The cpu and gpu haven’t seen a game they can’t handle at 1600p with high to ultra settings.. so I’m hoping my favourite developers can improve this!

[@BruceKarrde]

I love that when Jedi Survivor was released people were pissed at the performance. The company then released a few patches to reduce the impact and make improvements. Now Starfield is out with worse performance on non-40xx cards and people are like "well, someone will make a mod for that" leaving Bethesda to just sit back while the community, once again, fixes their game. Did Bethesda release any patches so far to make improvements?

[@gokublack8342]

Are you expecting them to? This is Bethesda were talking about...Aka "It just works" I mean Oblivion a game released years ago has to be modded to even run properly and then you'll need a few more mods for it to not be a buggy mess

[@BruceKarrde]

@gokublack8342 am I expecting them to fix their issues? I don't care if it's Bethesda. Why are people so accepting of their low quality? It's like people entering abusive relationships, just because that person is famous. Such reasoning "because it's Bethesda" makes companies release half-baked games full of micro transactions and other issues. Why do you allow this? Why are people praising Buldar's Gate 3 for what they delivered, laugh at other developers because they now have a standard to meet, and the week after people are accepting bare minimum standards.

[@justanormalguy4885]

To be fair the official release for Starfield hasn't even occurred yet.

[@Krond2009]

There's a program called Special K which allows inspection and exporting of data related to CPU thread usage and performance, if you'd like to dive into why it's CPU limited.

[@Spark010]

Microsoft’s rule of thumb for CPU bottlenecks is total system usage of 75% or above means you should consider upgrading the CPU.

[@A.Froster]

That makes sense if the game isn't pegging your CPU this hard for no reason.

[@alenko4763]

@@blue-lu3iz You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about lmao

[@Spark010]

@@blue-lu3iz total system usage. Doesn’t matter how many cores you have. If they all add up to 75% or above, it’s considered a bottleneck.

[@Spark010]

CPU don’t scale linearly. At around 75%, the overhead on the OS and CPU to manage that load starts to become counter productive.

[@Spark010]

@@blue-lu3iz yes CPU, that’s the conversation.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

I finally found a decent sweet spot for the settings, which is basically the High preset and then some set to Medium, with all scaling-nonsense (as it is in this case) off. - Though... that's at 1080p 21:9... But today I will be receiving a 1600p monitor, meaning I will be able to run it at 1620p (Linux doesn't seem to allow for running higher-than-native resolutions, the RSR thing that is), so now I will want to use a higher resolution than 1080p and probably destroy the performance even more... Though, I guess I could make use of scaling then...

[@MentalCrusader]

I hope more future games will have input independent from FPS, it would feel so much better

[@SaiakuNaSenshu]

run first in first out vsync or vsync off you will get tearing but no input lag

[@JimijaymesProductions]

DLSS 3 frame generation mod might not be the best but I had no issue with the dlss 2 upscaler from pure dark it was a smoother experience than other games with integrated dlss (3080) , I do have a 3900x though which isn't really a limit cpu wise.

[@thaddeus2447]

Pretty insane cpu and gpu requirement for a game which looks like noMansky or in somecases worse

[@Kartlarimicaldilar]

No one in their right mind can land on a planet or look inside their ship in Starfield and think it looks like NMS.

[@zxbc1]

Lol what's with all the NMS shilling? Starfield looks so much better than NMS no matter where you are in the game. NMS literally looks like a children's toy in its graphics fidelity with how low poly and low res the textures are. Besides, you already have a ton of mods to improve the look of Starfield like the filter remover and different reshade profiles, and DLSS mod.

[@joseywales7463]

This game looks like Skyrim. Faded, weak lighting. Some one please unistall this game, repatch it 2 years when its playable.

[@VictusPrime]

Doesn't look anything like No Man's Sky. If anything, Starfield just looks like Fallout 4 with a space-themed skin.

[@robertcarhiboux3164]

it looks terrible that's why people compare @@zxbc1

[@Desicrator88]

Not sure if it has been mentioned in the comments or not, but there is now a free DLSS Frame Generation mod out on Nexus.

[@starkistuna]

Please review all games without upscaling at native , developers are going to get lazy if people get used to upscalers being forced natevely when first run of a game and after a shader compilation they sneak in 66% upscaling as default. This is going to be bullshit and they will get more bold to deceive customers and get to drive more sales on old systems.

[@Guldfisken90]

2:18 Can we just appreciate the npcs chilling at the glass cealing

[@mafreeen]

I'm not an expert but I suspect that anything beyond 50% CPU utilization in this game is considered CPU bottleneck. At this percentage, the game uses all your physical cores and the limiting factor could be the efficiency of using logical cores or multithreading. I hope we could conduct further testing if adding more physical cores have a significant improvements in the performance.

[@hando87]

Cheers for the video. I had a r5 2600 at launch and upgraded to the 5800x3 at launch for this very reason. It served me well but when it was clear that the 5800x3d was the last hoorah for the am4 platform, it was time (4 years). Bios-modding b350 motherboard to b450 support and I'll be seeing just how far DDR5 goes in the next generation...or two?

[@gytis321s2]

I don't get it. Cyberpunk makes this game look like trash and yet runs way better on my 3060 lol

[@A.Froster]

It's called Bethesda still using the same garbage game engine that still has very obvious technical limitations.

[@rioplats]

If you turn pathtracing/DLSS off in CP77, I think they're actually of pretty comparable visual fidelity, especially when it comes to PBR material work and interior lighting. Starfield might actually have the edge in some cases there. Non-RT water is also pretty bad in both games. It's some of the flatter lighting in overcast areas where Starfield looks super ugly, that's undeniable. And I know Starfield's crowd NPCs are of nightmare fuel, but CP77's crowd NPCs are also pretty rough - it's really the pathtraced lighting that takes CP77's crowd NPCs to acceptable levels, if you check what they look like normally. CP77 definitely runs better for how it looks, at least after launch, for sure. We definitely shouldn't be expecting performance to come months or years after release, so seeing this for Starfield after Cyberpunk's rough launch is a shame in any case. Big question, imo, is to why BGS didn't implement a native DLSS solution and ray-tracing (outside of RTGI). AMD deal? Lack of knowledge? It's not a replacement for good native performance, but it is a bandaid most would have appreciated. Hopefully officially coming down the line, given modders added it day one, but with this studio who knows? xD

[@eddienlynn1]

It took cyberpunk literally 2 years to get to where it’s at starfield hasn’t really come out yet and the amount of content in this game is insane cyberpunk is straight garbage and boring

[@Six_Gorillion]

@@eddienlynn1 Indeed. Much more fun is to float around barren planets to find rocks to point your lazer at so you might after 40 hours have enough mugguffin recourses to build your base. Now thats peak gaming.

[@iHaveTheDocuments]

How did cyberpunk run on your 3060 on release? Hmm

[@jamesmith5960]

Would have loved to see some other options like SMT/direct storage/resizable bar, CAS latency, ect. Maybe there is something that can be done to improve cpu limits.

[@sausje]

Really milking it eh?

[@jqwright28]

I upgraded from a 6 core cpu to a 8 core and saw a significant bump in fps, all this tracks. My average fps during total playtime, that's in cities, outdoors and indoors is over 100 fps now. I'm sure a 13600k or maybe even a 7600x would be fine, but I just felt like if I'm going to upgrade, I'll just go with the 8 cores. Ideally 6 cores ought to be enough but that's not how it is playing out. I do think there's a discussion to be had that midrange cpus should have more than 6 performance/real cores going forward, just like the debate about midrange gpus should have more than 8 gb vram.

[@Loxly-ti4sq]

Probably 99% of players can't get stable 60fps, with my mediocre CPU r5 3600 + 6700xt i'd just play with 30fps cap max settings with a controller cuz my eyes can't handle unstable FPS under 60.

[@robertcarhiboux3164]

and it's a good setup for 1080p. This hardware at launch was presented as 1440p, even 4k capable. even a 4090 is crying at 1080p on this game, it never feels smooth, and graphics/textures are simply ugly. looks like a 2009 game like mirror's edge, sometimes even worse on some objects.

[@SimonGreen85]

This is exactly the content I was looking for. I have had an amd 3600 for a few years and always planned on upgrading. This is giving me the right advice.

[@robbie_]

No idea why you're testing this trash game.

[@furiousscotsman2916]

Cause it isn't trash and is actually quite fun if you don't get your opinion from social media 😂😂😂

[@LightMCXx]

I have no idea why you want to comment

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

because its popular since its a big brand and had lots of marketing. From their point of view it makes total sense- viewers are interested in it. But yeah, sadly popularity is based off how much marketing a game gets and not how good it is. If only these games (starfield, cyberpunk etc.) would focus on making a good game instead...

[@A.Froster]

​@@furiousscotsman2916Fun playing, with the terrible performance, the usual unpolished turd Bethesda puts out and that modders have to fix months or years later? Lick the boot harder

[@A.Froster]

Because marketing is everything so everything that revolves around this game is relevant, it doesn't matter if it's negative or positive

[@JerDog1984]

Nearly 1 million subs, come oooooooon! Cheers guys

[@LifelessTooth]

This video is a godsend, so far this has been the first "performance tips" video I've seen that actually gave performance tips and test results.

[@mroutcast8515]

13:12 - what? No? Then how RTX 4090 is matched even by RX 7900XT which is on average is 33% slower GPU? It's purely due to driver overhead.

[@Navi_xoo]

There are games where 7900xtx trades blows with 4090 besides Starfield. 4090 tends to pull away furthest at 4k but even at 4k there are other games like this.

[@xVertigo101]

Time to upgrade from 9700k, going to get 7950x3d and a motherboard X670E in December

[@cks2020693]

This is why I love DLSS 3. I'm also using a somewhat outdated CPU (i7-11700F), a little faster than 5600x just installed the mod, I have a 4070Ti, fps went from 60-80 to 95-144 @1440p, no feeling of lag whatsoever And frame generation is such a good way to solve CPU limited problems, my GPU usage went from 60-80% to 80-99%

[@jporter504]

Looking forward to benchmarking with other CPUs. Good video.

[@Ray-dl5mp]

Don’t you think this is a lack of optimization too? The fact that low crowd density can still tank performance in this game on pretty good setups or running the game at 1080p to me means that they should improve this if they can. If they can improve the cpu performance then it will be better for everyone.