Starfield, Bethesda’s latest big space RPG, runs more efficiently on AMD GPUs than NVIDIA GPUs, and that was a surprise for some players. After in-depth analysis, it was possible to understand that this happens due to specific architectural advantages.
Starfield Has Better Performance on AMD GPUs
ChipsAndCheese took a good look at the game’s performance on both manufacturers’ current flagship cards. RTX 4090 and RX 7900 XTX, highlighting how AMD’s card provides better efficiency at all resolutions.
According to Redidt user, Mikereysalo, ChipsAndCheese highlights how the AMD card overachieves in this game than to some advantages. These include fewer cores with bigger register files. They allow the GPU to track more threads per core. It leads to higher occupancy that benefits performance, a higher L2 bandwidth granted by a smaller L2 cache, and using wave 64 instead of wave 32, which tracks only half the threads as wave32.
It’s not like the NVIDIA GPUs are underperforming in Starfield. Instead, the situation makes AMD GPUs overperforming. Even so, ChipsAndCheese concludes that NVIDIA’s strategy is ultimately validated by the RTX 4090’s massive shader array, which allows it to come out on top with 55.2 FPS, executed in 18.1 ms in the analyzed frame. The AMD 7800 XTX falls a bit short at nearly 50 FPS, rendered in 20.2 ms.
The full analysis provides plenty of interesting facts on the matter. Therefore, make sure to check it out to understand how Bethesda’s game takes advantage of the unique architectural features of AMD GPUs.
Read Also: Tales of Arise: Beyond The Dawn DLC Announced Two Years After The Launch
While performance is certainly an issue for some, Starfield has more to offer than just being a new-generation game. The RPG brings an engaging story, a huge amount of content, and solid combat.
“With an engaging story, well-developed characters and lore, and a huge amount of meaningful content, Starfield is one of Bethesda’s finest games and one of the best role-playing games released in the past few years. The lack of seamless exploration and real innovation of the typical gameplay formula from the studio are noteworthy, but those willing to forego these issues will find a reactive and sprawling sci-fi universe to lose themselves in for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours.” – Via WCCFTech
Starfield is currently available for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. It is also part of the Game Pass library on PCs and consoles. Therefore, it’s also possible to play it on any device that supports the Xbox Game Cloud.
