Spinning up the Starfield happiness generator to maximum, we got the opportunity to sit down with Bethesda’s very own space cowboy Todd Howard for a chat about the upcoming space RPG. Naturally, we couldn’t avoid asking about Starfield frame rate, and whether we can expect smooth 60fps gameplay on the Xbox Series X/S – the space game’s performance on consoles, and the PC requirements you’ll need to meet to get there.
As we patiently wait for Starfield release date, Microsoft’s platforms are among the first to get a taste. Speaking to IGN, Howard confirms that Starfield Xbox performance will sit firmly at 30 frames per second, citing that “the team really wants to maintain [the] huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen” in order to do so.
In the brief Starfield Direct we saw earlier this year, both 4K and 1440p resolution support is available to the Xbox Series X, while the lesser Series S sits at 1440p – PC players playing on either the Nvidia RTX 4000, or AMD Radeon VII will naturally be able to take advantage between higher frame rates and resolutions.
“We felt it was important for the frame rate to be locked [on consoles] at 30 [at] balance of quality and consistency,” Howard adds. According to Howard, PC players can naturally “turn down a lot of graphics” and achieve 60 fps or higher on 144Hz monitors, but at the cost of fidelity.
Howard stresses that there’s no reason to worry if you’re rocking a beefier PC setup, explaining that while “one of the big emphasis [sic] with Starfield is 60 fps (at) very high resolution, 4K,” he goes on to add that you’ll be able to “turn down a lot of the graphics and get at 60 fps quite easily.”
Starfield PC requirements
On desktop, Starfield PC requirements aren’t heavy lifting by any means, with the minimum GPU requirement being a GeForce 1070 Ti or Radeon RX 5700, with the latter offering a little extra processing power courtesy of AMD’s Radeon Engine Gaming. Rounding off the requirements is a GeForce RTX 2080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT, though you’ll have to step up to the GeForce RTX 40 Series to get optimal results.
We’ll update the Starfield recommended system specs, once they’re made available by Bethesda. In the meantime, we’d recommend taking a look at our recommended gaming PC build guide, alongside the best pre-built gaming PCs, so that you can jump into space without worrying about your internals.
Sadly, Starfield’s list of recommended specs doesn’t include anything regarding either Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR, so it’s unclear what is recommended when it comes to frame rate and resolution. We’ll update this news once Bethesda shares its recommendations.