A video from modder PureDark shows off the performance benefits of DLSS3 in the Patreon-only version of his mod.
Nvidia graphics card owners can rest easy;
Starfield
modders have already added support for Nvidia's Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) technology (alongside the game's official support for AMD's FSR2 upscaling). But unlocking the full power of that mod will require either paying for a Patreon subscription or using cracks to get around some controversial DRM protecting the most full-featured version of the mod.
Since its initial release on Friday, the
"Starfield Upscaler"
is currently
the most popular
Starfield
mod listed
on clearinghouse NexusMods. That should be welcome news to a
significant portion of the PC gaming community
running a newer Nvidia GPU that supports the frame-rate-enhancing upscaling technology. That's especially true for the Nvidia owners who were outraged when
Bethesda announced an official
Starfield
partnership with AMD this summer.
In practice, though, the practical effect of that DLSS support might be hard to notice for many players. In Ars' testing on a GTX 2080 Ti gaming rig (running at 2560×1440 resolution, Ultra quality, and 50 percent render resolution), we were able to hit 35 frames per second using both the DLSS mod and the game's built-in AMD FSR2 support (which also works on Nvidia cards). Neither upscaling technology had an apparent performance edge, even as both improved significantly on the ~25 fps frame rate when running at full resolution without any upscaling (and even as DLSS has shown
superior visual quality in other tests
).