Starfield PC System Requirements Revealed, Stuck at 30 FPS on Xbox

[GFreeman]

Bethesda has unveiled the first gameplay trailer for Starfield during the Starfield Direct after the Xbox Games Showcase yesterday, showing some impressive graphics from this upcoming sci-fi RPG. Shortly after, we got the confirmation from the Game Director, Todd Howard, that the game will actually be locked at 30 FPS, which does not sounds surprising, especially after the full PC system requirements got revealed.

Bethesda has put a lot of effort into Starfield, and it shows it the seen trailer. The team is also claiming that this game will have "the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game ever shipped," according to an interview that the Xbox Game Studios Head, Matt Booty, gave to Giant Bomb. He also added that there are a lot of people internally playing Starfield, and Phil Spencer, head of Xbox Games Studio, told the same outfit that the game had a much earlier release date, and was delayed twice, so hopefully we'll have a solid game at launch. Unfortunately, Todd Howard, also confirmed that the game will run at full 4K on the Xbox Series X and at 1440p on the Xbox Series S, but will be locked at 30 FPS on both consoles.



The first PC system requirements for the game have been posted over at the official Steam page, and while minimum system requirements do not sound that bad, an SSD requirement does raise a lot of questions. The minimum requirements include an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i7-6800K CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti graphics card. The recommended list raises those to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or an Intel Core i5-10600K CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and either an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. As noted, you'll also need 125 GB of SSD storage space.



Hopefully, we will hear a clarification from Bethesda about these PC system requirements soon.

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[drno2]

Interesting, so this will not run on LTSC 2021, since that version is build 19044. Is this the first major title to be locked out of the last LTSC Windows 10 version?

 

[GerKNG]

the low CPU requirement and the very small increment between minimum and recommended makes me think that starfield will be 60 FPS capped on PC...

 

[TheDeeGee]

Remember when consoles did 30 FPS like 20+ years ago? Man, how far we've come.

 

[Arkz]

30fps on Series X is some bullshit. Doesn't seem to be CPU heavy, and the Series X GPU is about what, 2080 Super level? If it can do 4k 30 surely they could do a 1440p 60 mode. It is Bethesda though.. Probably won't even be a steady 30fps knowing them.

 

[Chomiq]

Doesn't seem to be CPU heavy,

Except it does track EVERY object in the game. Case in point the sandwich meme from the presentation.

 

[Arkz]

Except it does track EVERY object in the game. Case in point the sandwich meme from the presentation.

Yet only needs a 2600X or 6800K.

 

[Broken Processor]

Recommended GPU RTX 2080 or RX 6800xt?
The 6800xt knocks the snot out of a 2080 is this going to be another not optimised game on AMD cards?

 

[Arkz]

Recommended GPU RTX 2080 or RX 6800xt?
The 6800xt knocks the snot out of a 2080 is this going to be another not optimised game on AMD cards?

Very weird. I mean a 5700 is a decent bit faster than a 1070Ti, but a 6800XT is massively faster than a 2080. It's weird.

 

[8tyone]

In the recommended they put RTX 2080 and RX 6800 XT together, but isnt RX 6800 XT way faster than an RTX 2080, infact the RX 6800 XT is as fast as a 3080. This is confusing for persons with 3060 Ti/3070(non-Ti) class of graphics cards. I was waiting for STALKER 2 but dont think that would be coming anytime soon or at all, thought Starfield would be worth it but RX 6800 XT is steep.
Dont play games that much anymore, nowadays.

Remember when consoles did 30 FPS like 20+ years ago? Man, how far we've come.

48 fps (min. fps) should be the new 30 fps for consoles.

 

[Vayra86]

Except it does track EVERY object in the game. Case in point the sandwich meme from the presentation.

Awesome... totally special, ever since Fallout 3 on 2GB RAM Windows XP. Don't ask how that ran, but yea. They did that on a potato, 15 years back.

30 FPS is an absolute joke totally unrelated to tracked objects, but rather to the abysmal engine used.

Starfield so far smells like budget bin material to me... the fact lots of PR heads are already rushing to excuses and 'no its not going to be super bad at launch' speaks volumes. Faith is low. Postponing hasn't really given us a clear view on what's truly improved compared to earlier builds. Animation quality is still leagues below par. The alarm bells are all over the place.

the low CPU requirement and the very small increment between minimum and recommended makes me think that starfield will be 60 FPS capped on PC...

Obviously, or their physics engine goes haywire. Again, same old.

We'll get a weird Skyrim in space with Mudcrabs. Yay

 

[8tyone]

Recommended GPU RTX 2080 or RX 6800xt?

Yes, very confusing.

 

[Kohl Baas]

Recommended GPU RTX 2080 or RX 6800xt?
The 6800xt knocks the snot out of a 2080 is this going to be another not optimised game on AMD cards?

Forced RayTracing?

 

[Nuckles56]

The least bugs of any bethesda game? I'll believe it when I see it...

 

[Vayra86]

The least bugs of any bethesda game? I'll believe it when I see it...

I think its directly related to the lack of atmosphere & oxygen in the better half of the game world

 

[Shihab]

an SSD requirement does raise a lot of questions.

Can't wait to have my NVME SSDs perform slower than 90s HDDs because someone thought it's ok to tie loading performance to vsync'ed framerate!

I think its directly related to the lack of atmosphere & oxygen in the better half of the game world

A Bethesda game with objects traveling at >1km/s velocities. What could go wrong?
(It will be chaos, and we will all love it)

 

[64K]

Odd System Requirements. Possible cap on PC version FPS. Todd Howard's team claims that this game will have less bugs than a normal Bethesda game.

This game is screaming to everyone to wait until after release for feedback before buying and trying to play it.

 

[Garrus]

Modern game rendering is not like the PS2 era. People have to understand, 30fps today is unacceptable, because the rendering uses multi frame sampling and and also does not use responsive forward rendering. It is much slower and there is much more blur in modern games at the same fps as old games.

A good comparison with Starfield is Final Fantasy 16. FF16 looks horrid at 30fps on PS5, you can't believe it, the temporal anti-aliasing blurs the screen horrifically. If you play it with the 31-60 fps mode, it is way better. Motion blur, TAA blur, and rendering blur from other effects is all massively reduced. It is unplayable at 30fps.

However even the PS5 doesn't get close to a locked 60fps with that game. If you want a smoothed experience, despite the blur, then 30 fps is your only option. The game does not run well, with constant drops in frame rate.

WE NEED 60FPS CONSOLES RIGHT NOW. PS5 PRO, SERIES X PRO. Zen4+RDNA3. I am not playing games at less than 60fps, and for me, that means the consoles are dead in the water, already, 3 years in to the generation.

FF16 and Starfield both don't work right on the hardware we have purchased. GPU upgrades will not solve the problem, we need more CPU power. 3Dcache in the consoles, or Zen4 are required.

 

[blacksea76]

Rehashing a fossil of an engine is going to bring only problems. Remember how removing the 60fps cap for Fallout will cause the game to go crazy because engine was linked to fps? Just wait to see how this crap engine will cope with this huge game, the stutter present everywhere in that showcase is telling the beginning of the story.
This only because Todd was lazy. I can't imagine why they kept him at the helm.

 

[Vayra86]

Rehashing a fossil of an engine is going to bring only problems. Remember how removing the 60fps cap for Fallout will cause the game to go crazy because engine was linked to fps? Just wait to see how this crap engine will cope with this huge game, the stutter present everywhere in that showcase is telling the beginning of the story.
This only because Todd was lazy. I can't imagine why they kept him at the helm.

Bethesda / Todd has royally screwed up lifecycle management for their engine, and since Skyrim they're stuck between rocks and hard places; you can't change the engine without dramatically harming the mod community they now absolutely require to get solid sales. A new engine means massive work on assets etc. to get a new game off the ground, and then you've got a mod community that will need to be able to work with all that from scratch again too. To Bethesda that is a massive risk with questionable pay off which is why they never went there in earnest. But every rehash of Creation is just postponing the inevitable crash... well in fact we're way past that point already.

 

[bug]

Eh, it's an RPG, it will play fine at 30fps. It's not going to have MK or Quake-style fights.

 

[TheDeeGee]

SSD required... damn, i replaced all my SSDs with NVMEs last week... guess i won't be playing it then

 

[bug]

SSD required... damn, i replaced all my SSDs with NVMEs last week... guess i won't be playing it then

No, you didn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

[qlum]

Remember when consoles did 30 FPS like 20+ years ago? Man, how far we've come.

I remember a lot of games running at 60fps in the ps2-gamecube-xbox era, it only went downhill from there on console.

Bethesda / Todd has royally screwed up lifecycle management for their engine, and since Skyrim they're stuck between rocks and hard places; you can't change the engine without dramatically harming the mod community they now absolutely require to get solid sales. A new engine means massive work on assets etc. to get a new game off the ground, and then you've got a mod community that will need to be able to work with all that from scratch again too. To Bethesda that is a massive risk with questionable pay off which is why they never went there in earnest. But every rehash of Creation is just postponing the inevitable crash... well in fact we're way past that point already.

Not really, It is quite normal for inhouse engines to get changed / overhauled especially with a game of this budget and development time there is plenty of opportunity to rework the engine for a better fit in the current day.

 

[siluro818]

Forced RayTracing?

More like Nvidia cards being evaluated with DLSS.