‘Monumental’: Starfield’s Feb. 20 update is a godsend for PC players

No more vibrating clouds, either.
A ship from Starfield firing its laser cannons and missiles at an enemy with a star in the background.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Starfield‘s PC players who have struggled for performance are over the moon today after Bethesda deployed update 1.9.67, with some reporting the addition of AMD’s FidelityFXTM Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3) has doubled their frames and “made the game playable again.”

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Bethesda shipped Starfield update 1.9.67 for all platforms yesterday, but PC users—and those specifically on AMD GPUs—will be feeling the upgrades the most after the inclusion of FSR 3. The tech combines frame generation and super-resolution temporal upscaling to boost FPS in a big way, and early reactions are shockingly good.

New Atlantis city landscape in Starfield
Experience New Atlantis in all its glory, without the frame drops. Image via Bethesda

One Starfield player described the update as a “gamechanger” and added that, despite owning an RX 5700XT (which turns five years old this year), their FPS jumped from 40 to 90 in downtown New Atlantis. “The performance leap is monumental. Once you’ve experienced this level of performance, there’s no turning back,” they gushed.

Many others supported the player’s sentiment in a Feb. 20 Reddit thread. One player who hadn’t touched the game in five months launched Starfield to see what all the fuss was about, admitting they “thought people were exaggerating,” before becoming immersed and playing a full session.

The update also included support for Intel’s Xe Super Sampling for those running on Intel GPU architecture, as well as a fix for a vibrating cloud bug that impacted those using DLSS performance mode. The bulk of the update catered to Starfield players on PC, but those on Xbox weren’t left out either—a FormID issue that impacted save files was also patched.

Some players noted a few big issues remained, such as several bugs related to “uncompleatable quests” but today’s update is a step in the right direction, especially given Starfield‘s struggles to keep its player base alive on PC.

The next step for Bethesda will be adding more content, which is expected to come in the form of the Shattered Space DLC in coming months. An exact release date for that DLC is still undetermined at this stage, but at the very least the players who haven’t been able to explore the stars due to performance issues should be able to from today.

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Author
Nicholas Taifalos
Weekend editor for Dot Esports. Nick, better known as Taffy, began his esports career in commentary, switching to journalism with a focus on Oceanic esports, particularly Counter-Strike and Dota. Email: nicholas@dotesports.com