Starfield

[Krenum]

4090 and 12700k. Frames between 55-90 from the first three hours of play so far. Why is this game so hard to run? The textures look like ass, the characters look like they're from games 10+ years ago. The lighting is nothing special. Basically does not look anything special at all. Gameplay is pretty epic so far though. But still, I should be getting 150+ at 4k by the looks of the graphics alone. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn are way better looking and run way better.

Shadow quality and distance are the two main factors in killing FPS in this game, they had this problem in Fallout 4 as well. Check out the above mod to give you a boost in performance.

 

[AceGoober]

Having invested 76.7 hours into Starfield, I haven't experienced any bugs at all. Performance has been great with high on every setting except motion blur which is low and shadows ultra on my mobile RTX 4070 8GB.

Been making bank by stealing ships from Crimson, Spacers and other entities plus selling off any gear I don't want. Combined with not purchasing anything from the merchants (except ammo which occurs few and far between) I've accumulated 9.6 million credits in the bank.

I'm not running any mods at the moment as I want my 1st through 3rd playthroughs bone stock to run different character and ship builds. Sticking with the Frontier as 1) I don't have the piloting level to fly a ship I stole and registered; and 2) it is upgraded enough to be able to survive combat with the factions I'm taking on.

All in all I am very satisfied with Starfield. The main quests, the side quests, amount of weapons and mods for them, ship variations and mods and fleshed out romance options don't leave me wanting for more. Although, to be fair, that could change after several 100 hours but right now I am completely satisfied.

 

[LigTasm]

I've been swapping GPUs around for a few hours now, and all I can say is HOLY CRAP this game runs bad on AM4. Like the charts in reviews don't tell the whole story, as gameplay itself was very poor compared to the current gen chips. It had this weird propensity to cycle up and down 10fps at a very regular interval every 2-3 seconds and it made the game feel awful. I'm running my 5700X with 32GB of 4000mhz B-die too.

 

[Mchart]

I've been swapping GPUs around for a few hours now, and all I can say is HOLY CRAP this game runs bad on AM4. Like the charts in reviews don't tell the whole story, as gameplay itself was very poor compared to the current gen chips. It had this weird propensity to cycle up and down 10fps at a very regular interval every 2-3 seconds and it made the game feel awful. I'm running my 5700X with 32GB of 4000mhz B-die too.

I’m running fine with a 4080 and a 5800x3D. Although yes, from looking at the benchmarks I’m glad I went to the 5800x3d a while back from my 5900x. 5800x3d still gives great performance on a motherboard that started with a 2700x.

 

[polonyc2]

10+ years old is maybe an exaggeration, but it is true that it doesn't look as good as other current gen titles. The likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2 and Far Cry 6 all look much better, and at the same time are much easier on the system than this game.

Just compare any in-game screen shot of say Judy Alvarez from Cyberpunk 2077 and Sarah Morgan from Starfield, and it clear we are dealing with an absolute generational difference in graphics between the two, especially when it comes to characters and faces

the fact that this is a next-gen only game (meaning only current gen consoles + PC) makes it even more of a head scratcher...the Creation/Gamebryo engine just might not be able to handle the visual fidelity of other engines...look at the upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (Snowdrop engine) or the Phantom Liberty expansion to see what a true next gen game can look like...part of it is Bethesda's intentional choice to make it look less detailed and muted but this does not compare at all to other games in terms of graphics...even Jedi: Survivor with it's somewhat grainy visuals looks better then Starfield

a studio with half the staff like Striking Distance can make a game like Callisto Protocol look 10x better than Starfield especially in terms of character models and facial animation...I hope they move away from the Creation Engine for Elder Scrolls 6

 

[peppergomez]

I dunno, they make pretty big games with lots of replay-ability for you labeling them as a bottom of the barrel dev. They were one of the first pushing open world gaming, or crafting your own spells was a good one too. They arent perfect of course, but to compare them to mcdonalds either you are just trolling or havent actually played more than 1 or 2 of their games. Casual gamers arent putting in hundreds of hours into a single game.

I played oblivion skyrim and fallout 3 for many hours. They lag behind other AAA RPGs in notbale ways. Sure, they give you huge worlds. But the quality of the content is not up to the standards in other notable RPGs like cyberpunk 2077, STALKER seriex, disco Elysium or Balders Gate 3 for example. The area is in which it's most notable to me are the writing and quest quality, the facial animations, the UI.

A few folks I have known over the years who are casual console gamers are playing the Bethesda games and not those other games. So that's my point re Bethesda aiming for the most accessible area of the gaming market at least as far as RPGs go.

I didnt truly enjoy skyrim until i modded it way up using the famous STEP process. And that was a beast of a mod pack.
It's very cool that Bethesda is so mod friendly. A more cynical way of viewing that is that they know full well that their jank and lack of ambition in certain areas will get addressed by the mod community.

 

[LigTasm]

I’m running fine with a 4080 and a 5800x3D. Although yes, from looking at the benchmarks I’m glad I went to the 5800x3d a while back from my 5900x.

The V-cache doesn't seem to do anything at all in this game, but with the 7900XTX the AM4 setup is like 30% behind AM5 or intel 13th gen. Its crazy, as this kind of setup is super common for gamers. I tested two areas, open wilderness on Tau Ceti and near town on Akila, staying away from the first city that is a little overdone. The game is so CPU bound even in the wilderness, I was actually seeing higher fps in some spots at higher resolution. Interestingly, the 7950X3D outpaces the 13700K once you get past the "CPU bottleneck spot" at 4K, not sure why this is happening. Maybe reBAR?

 

[Mchart]

the fact that this is a next-gen only game (meaning only current gen consoles + PC) makes it even more of a head scratcher...the Creation/Gamebryo engine just might not be able to handle the visual fidelity of other engines...look at the upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (Snowdrop engine) or the Phantom Liberty expansion to see what a true next gen game can look like...part of it is Bethesda's intentional choice to make it look less detailed and muted but this does not compare all to other games...even Jedi: Survivor with it's somewhat grainy visuals looks better then Starfield

even a studio with half the staff like Striking Distance can make a game like Callisto Protocol look 10x better than Starfield especially in terms of character models and facial animation...I hope they move away from the Creation Engine for Elder Scrolls 6

Again, none of those games, to include cyberpunk, have this level of complexity with the amount of stuff that is loaded in memory and constantly tracked even when it’s not loaded up in the current cell.

And BTW - Callisto was literally unplayable at release. Not an exaggeration. The shader stutter on day 1 made it unplayable.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I've been swapping GPUs around for a few hours now, and all I can say is HOLY CRAP this game runs bad on AM4. Like the charts in reviews don't tell the whole story, as gameplay itself was very poor compared to the current gen chips. It had this weird propensity to cycle up and down 10fps at a very regular interval every 2-3 seconds and it made the game feel awful. I'm running my 5700X with 32GB of 4000mhz B-die too.

There is something to this game being very sensitive to RAM bandwidth.

I'm not fully up to speed with AM4 and RAM speeds, but I vaguely remember that if you run the RAM at above a certain frequency, it kicks the infinity fabric from 1:1 mode down to 1:2 mode or something like that. I forget the exact frequency this happens at. 3600 or 3700 maybe? If you are running it at 4000, maybe if you lower the RAM speed down to the highest speed that keeps a 1:1 infinity fabric speed, and instead focus on optimizing timings at that speed, you'll have a better experience? Because if your infinity fabric is running too slowly, it will wind up being the bottleneck.

Keep in mind, this is all from stuff I read YEARS ago, so I'd verify the specifics by googling Zen RAM optimization.

 

[Mchart]

The V-cache doesn't seem to do anything at all in this game, but with the 7900XTX the AM4 setup is like 30% behind AM5 or intel 13th gen. Its crazy, as this kind of setup is super common for gamers. I tested two areas, open wilderness on Tau Ceti and near town on Akila, staying away from the first city that is a little overdone.

That’s not true at all. Look at any number of cpu benchmarks and the 5800x3d is like 40% faster compared to the 5800x. With the AM5 stuff that might be true, but not with AM4. I assume because the memory bandwidth is so much worse on am4 that the cache makes a huge difference.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Again, none of those games, to include cyberpunk, have this level of complexity with the amount of stuff that is loaded in memory and constantly tracked even when it’s not loaded up in the current cell.

I still call bull on this.

There does not seem to be anything at all running in the background in this game. When you are in New Atlantis, it seems to be using the CPU and GPU to render New Atlantis, not other planets.

It seems like an excuse to try to explain away the worst graphics to system load ratio I've ever seen in any game.

 

[LigTasm]

There is something to this game being very sensitive to RAM bandwidth.

I'm not fully up to speed with AM4 and RAM speeds, but I vaguely remember that if you run the RAM at above a certain frequency, it kicks the infinity fabric from 1:1 mode down to 1:2 mode or something like that. I forget the exact frequency this happens at. 3600 or 3700 maybe? If you are running it at 4000, maybe if you lower the RAM speed down to the highest speed that keeps a 1:1 infinity fabric speed, and instead focus on optimizing timings at that speed, you'll have a better experience? Because if your infinity fabric is running too slowly, it will wind up being the bottleneck.

Keep in mind, this is all from stuff I read YEARS ago, so I'd verify the specifics by googling Zen RAM optimization.

I tried with stock speeds compared to my overclock setting, it doesn't seem to make much difference. Bear in mind I specifically avoided New Atlantis where literally every review went to, because its an outlier for 95% of the game. I really wanted to get back to the mech lab on Arcturis but its a mission only area, that place was the lowest frame rate I saw the entire 50 hours of my playthrough. I wish I had some kind of graphing software, I just have my averages written on a notepad lol

That’s not true at all. Look at any number of cpu benchmarks and the 5800x3d is like 40% faster compared to the 5800x. With the AM5 stuff that might be true, but not with AM4.

I don't have an AM4 X3D chip but I ran my 7950X3D in 8-core mode with and without the cache CCD enabled and there was virtually no difference. Again, I'm avoiding the one spot every single review went to, New Atlantis, because after all the hours I've played it doesn't represent the game at large. Its like Hogsmeade in HWL. Stupidly CPU bound but ultimately not really a big deal because most of the game isn't there. I also don't have an Nvidia GPU and I know things are slightly different for them, so it may be helping you a lot there. As long as its running good for you thats all the matters.

 

[polonyc2]

AMD has extended its Starfield Premium Edition bundle to the newly released Radeon RX 7800 XT & RX 7700 XT GPUs...

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I tried with stock speeds compared to my overclock setting, it doesn't seem to make much difference. Bear in mind I specifically avoided New Atlantis where literally every review went to, because its an outlier for 95% of the game. I really wanted to get back to the mech lab on Arcturis but its a mission only area, that place was the lowest frame rate I saw the entire 50 hours of my playthrough. I wish I had some kind of graphing software, I just have my averages written on a notepad lol




I don't have an AM4 X3D chip but I ran my 7950X3D in 8-core mode with and without the cache CCD enabled and there was virtually no difference. Again, I'm avoiding the one spot every single review went to, New Atlantis, because after all the hours I've played it doesn't represent the game at large. Its like Hogsmeade in HWL. Stupidly CPU bound but ultimately not really a big deal because most of the game isn't there. I also don't have an Nvidia GPU and I know things are slightly different for them, so it may be helping you a lot there. As long as its running good for you thats all the matters.

I used New Atlantis for testing on purpose because I knew it was a worst case.

I figured, if I can get it running well there, it will run well anywhere.

 

[Mchart]

I still call bull on this.

There does not seem to be anything at all running in the background in this game. When you are in New Atlantis, it seems to be using the CPU and GPU to render New Atlantis, not other planets.

It seems like an excuse to try to explain away the worst graphics to system load ratio I've ever seen in any game.

I'll again disagree. This game isn't great from a performance/visual quality standpoint - But shit, i'll again point out that at release Callisto was literally unplayable and it's not like it was super remarkable visually nor was it large in scope - Just a simple UE4 corridor shooter.

My point here is that this game really isn't in that bad of shape for release compared to any AAA game recently. This includes Hogwarts which was also stuttering garbage, etc.

 

[polonyc2]

There does not seem to be anything at all running in the background in this game. When you are in New Atlantis, it seems to be using the CPU and GPU to render New Atlantis, not other planets

plus it wouldn't make sense to load other planets into memory because the game doesn't know which planet you're going to choose to go to next

 

[LigTasm]

I used New Atlantis for testing on purpose because I knew it was a worst case.

I figured, if I can get it running well there, it will run well anywhere.

I understand the sentiment, but I think I spent like 35 minutes there in 48 hours and most of that was in conversations or building ships. I'm not professionally testing stuff like a reviewer, I just wanted to see how they play. I was more concerned with the feel of it than the actual frame rate, like I can tell you the 7950X3D is smoother no matter what even though the intel system gets higher fps in many cases (except 4K ultra). I noticed with the 13700K especially in open-world maps it will have huge pauses for 2-3 seconds when loading in the background, very jarring.

Also, the RX 570 is completely incapable of plaything the game at any resolution. Even 720p is like 24 fps. I feel for peeps still rocking Polaris cards.

Came across this earlier, this is honestly a pretty cool case mod:

https://signalrgb.com/starfield/?ut..._campaign=OpenWorldGames&utm_content=Preroll1

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I understand the sentiment, but I think I spent like 35 minutes there in 48 hours and most of that was in conversations or building ships. I'm not professionally testing stuff like a reviewer, I just wanted to see how they play. I was more concerned with the feel of it than the actual frame rate, like I can tell you the 7950X3D is smoother no matter what even though the intel system gets higher fps in many cases (except 4K ultra). I noticed with the 13700K especially in open-world maps it will have huge pauses for 2-3 seconds when loading in the background, very jarring.

Also, the RX 570 is completely incapable of plaything the game at any resolution. Even 720p is like 24 fps. I feel for peeps still rocking Polaris cards.

Came across this earlier, this is honestly a pretty cool case mod:

https://signalrgb.com/starfield/?ut..._campaign=OpenWorldGames&utm_content=Preroll1

My play style in these open world RPG FPS games tends to be slow and methodological, but I am about 22 hours in now.

Spoiler: some early game spoilers

I've really just done early Constellation quests thus far, Introductory quest to return the artifact + retrive another artifact from a UC guy in SOL system and one follow up quest to get Barrett back.

On the way back from the Barrett quest I decided to start the Groundpounder side quest and boy was that a mistake. I had no problem with the gunplay on "very hard" settings but then you have to clear the system of Spacer ships and I was still on the ststtibg ship which wad nowherw near up to the task in "very hard". It was instadeath every time, going up against two different sets of three Spacer ships. I'm not proud of it, but I had to lower the difficulty to get through this one.

So save this side quest for when you have a better ship

I did do a side quest in The Well (chasing down electrical faults) but other than that no other quests in New Atlantis.

I find that most of my time spent there is coming back from Constellation missions, going to the lodge and selling off loot at the different stores, and since the stores run out of credits all the time, there is quite a bit of that.

I wound up testing positive for COVID Tuesday night and haven't played at all since I was just about to either buy or build myself a better ship with the some 85k in credits I've accumulated, mostly from selling weapons and other loot.

One might think COVID would give me a great excuse to stay home from work and play, but COVID brain is real, as is the fatigue, so I am not really able to play right now.

 

[LigTasm]

My play style in these open world RPG FPS games tends to be slow and methodological, but I am about 22 hours in now.

Spoiler: some early game spoilers

I've really just done early Constellation quests thus far, Introductory quest to return the artifact + retrive another artifact from a UC guy in SOL system and one follow up quest to get Barrett back.

On the way back from the Barrett quest I decided to start the Groundpounder side quest and boy was that a mistake. I had no problem with the gunplay on "very hard" settings but then you have to clear the system of Spacer ships and I was still on the ststtibg ship which wad nowherw near up to the task in "very hard". It was instadeath every time, going up against two different sets of three Spacer ships. I'm not proud of it, but I had to lower the difficulty to get through this one.

So save this side quest for when you have a better ship

I did do a side quest in The Well (chasing down electrical faults) but other than that no other quests in New Atlantis.

I find that most of my time spent there is coming back from Constellation missions, going to the lodge and selling off loot at the different stores, and since the stores run out of credits all the time, there is quite a bit of that.

I wound up testing positive for COVID Tuesday night and haven't played at all since I was just about to either buy or build myself a better ship with the some 85k in credits I've accumulated, mostly from selling weapons and other loot.

One might think COVID would give me a great excuse to stay home from work and play, but COVID brain is real, as is the fatigue, so I am not really able to play right now.

I highly suggest doing the Mantis questline if you want a ship, its got one of the better freebies and its pretty fun. I always seem to pick it up very early on.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I highly suggest doing the Mantis questline if you want a ship, its got one of the better freebies and its pretty fun. I always seem to pick it up very early on.

Thanks for that recommendation. I already have the tab, so I was planning on doing this quest at some point, but after my grave miscalculation in doing Groundpounders too early, I was second guessing myself, and going to delay it. Maybe I'll do it next before I do shipbuilding.

Alternatively I was thinking of just doing a minor edit to the initial ship to add a little storage space to give me some quality of life improvements.

 

[silentcircuit]

Performance is dreadful on the 7900 XTX and Ryzen 5 3600, can't even keep above 60 FPS at 1440p, and of course even worse at 4K. I'm glad I didn't pay for this (GamePass, but still) there's no excuse. The game looks ok. Just "ok" . How is Bethesda still so bad at this? If it were any other studio we'd be seeing 2-3x these frame rates.

Xbox Game Bar overlay regularly shows under 10% CPU usage, too. Don't know if that's accurate, but if it is that's insane.

 

[Mchart]

Performance is dreadful on the 7900 XTX and Ryzen 5 3600, can't even keep above 60 FPS at 1440p, and of course even worse at 4K. I'm glad I didn't pay for this, there's no excuse. The game looks ok. Just "ok" . How is Bethesda still so bad at this? If it were any other studio we'd be seeing 2-3x these frame rates.

Highly recommend picking up a 5800x3d. Your motherboard should support it if it supports a 3600. The performance boost will be massive, and they're only $268 from BHP at the moment.

 

[NightReaver]

Performance is dreadful on the 7900 XTX and Ryzen 5 3600, can't even keep above 60 FPS at 1440p, and of course even worse at 4K. I'm glad I didn't pay for this (GamePass, but still) there's no excuse. The game looks ok. Just "ok" . How is Bethesda still so bad at this? If it were any other studio we'd be seeing 2-3x these frame rates.

Xbox Game Bar overlay regularly shows under 10% CPU usage, too. Don't know if that's accurate, but if it is that's insane.

Todd says to just upgrade your pc

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Highly recommend picking up a 5800x3d. Your motherboard should support it if it supports a 3600. The performance boost will be massive, and they're only $268 from BHP at the moment.

Agreed. That's probably the quickest and easiest drop in upgrade that will make Starfield run much better. (I'd upgrade to latest BIOS before installing the new CPU just in case old bios doesn't recognize a 5800X3D

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Performance is dreadful on the 7900 XTX and Ryzen 5 3600, can't even keep above 60 FPS at 1440p, and of course even worse at 4K. I'm glad I didn't pay for this (GamePass, but still) there's no excuse. The game looks ok. Just "ok" . How is Bethesda still so bad at this? If it were any other studio we'd be seeing 2-3x these frame rates.

Xbox Game Bar overlay regularly shows under 10% CPU usage, too. Don't know if that's accurate, but if it is that's insane.

It's the CPU. It's not the GPU. The 7900xtx is every bit as fast, (if not slightly faster) than a 4090 in this title.

That CPU is holding you back through. Like Mchart said above, a 5800X3D upgrade is probably the chepaest fix that will make your experience much much better. I'd also make sure you are running at at least DDR4-3600. The game is RAM sensitive as well.

 

[silentcircuit]

Highly recommend picking up a 5800x3d. Your motherboard should support it if it supports a 3600. The performance boost will be massive, and they're only $268 from BHP at the moment.

I can't justify spending that on a dead platform, especially when the performance issue is almost exclusive to this game.

It's the CPU. It's not the GPU. The 7900xtx is every bit as fast, (if not slightly faster) than a 4090 in this title.

That CPU is holding you back through. Like Mchart said above, a 5800X3D upgrade is probably the chepaest fix that will make your experience much much better. I'd also make sure you are running at at least DDR4-3600. The game is RAM sensitive as well.

2-10% CPU usage most of the time, no issues in other titles. It's not the CPU, it's Bethesda.

 

[Mchart]

I can't justify spending that on a dead platform, especially when the performance issue is almost exclusive to this game.

It’s a big upgrade across the board for most games, and $270 is great value for the level of upgrade that provides. Seems insane to have bought a $1100 GPU when you only had a 3600.

 

[Mchart]

2-10% CPU usage most of the time, no issues in other titles. It's not the CPU, it's Bethesda.

You’re very wrong. Look up any number of benchmarks for the 5800x3d compared to a 3600.

Techspot did an article just on this particular upgrade.. https://www.techspot.com/review/2502-upgrade-ryzen-3600-to-5800x3d/

 

[silentcircuit]

You’re very wrong. Look up any number of benchmarks for the 5800x3d compared to a 3600.

I'm not saying the 5800x3D doesn't run the game better - I know it does - I'm saying that the game clearly isn't making proper use of the 3600. It's painfully obvious Bethesda made no attempt to get this game running well on older but still entirely capable hardware. I'll probably do a full rebuild in a few months, don't see any point spending money on AM4 at this point.

 

[LigTasm]

I can't justify spending that on a dead platform, especially when the performance issue is almost exclusive to this game.


2-10% CPU usage most of the time, no issues in other titles. It's not the CPU, it's Bethesda.

This game absolutely hammers the CPU, don't bother with that percentage reading, open the task manager and switch to the per-core view and play for a bit then look at the graphs. Every core will be maxed out for the time you were playing. I have no idea why it shows such low usage on overlays when its clearly beating the shit out of the CPU.

 

[Mchart]

I'm not saying the 5800x3D doesn't run the game better - I know it does - I'm saying that the game clearly isn't making proper use of the 3600. It's painfully obvious Bethesda made no attempt to get this game running well on older but still entirely capable hardware. I'll probably do a full rebuild in a few months, don't see any point spending money on AM4 at this point.

3600 isn’t “capable hardware” when paired with a 2023 $1100 GPU. It’s not just this game, you’re leaving a huge amount of performance off the table because your CPU is holding you back.

 

[BeavermanA]

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

3600 isn’t “capable hardware” when paired with a 2023 $1100 GPU. It’s not just this game, you’re leaving a huge amount of performance off the table because your CPU is holding you back.

The truth is, most people going for top of the line GPU's are usually targeting 4k or other high resolution gaming, which means we can usually get away with older CPU's because we are going to be GPU limited anyway. This game is quite the exception.

I'm sure it won't be the only one as time goes on, but as of right now he isn't wrong that this is the only game that hammers the CPU quite like this.

 

[MelonSplitter]

I'm done. One of the worst games in every aspect I've played. Un-installed tonight. What is the point of this game? Combat sucks, story sucks and graphics are laughably horrible. I could go on but what's the point. Other people will say I'm delusional.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Well, I took my first ship in a side quest, but for some reason the game is bugged and won't let me rename it.

I'll change it in the ship builder, but as soon as I apply changes and exit, it goes right back to the original name.

Guess I am stuck flying around in "Damaged ship".

Also, I can't for the life of me find the console to access the cargo hold in this ship...

Edit: I guess that doesn't matter as you can shortcut there by pressing Q when in character inventory anyway...

 

[Eivind68]

Maybe it has been answered in this thread before, but how are the NPC's this time around? Are they more natural acting than in previous games or do they still say random things like "I took a laser to my knee" when you pass them?
The random sentences spoken out loud was something that really irritated me in the previous games, nobody says stuff like that to a random person on the street without having been asked or having a severe mental problem.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Maybe it has been answered in this thread before, but how are the NPC's this time around? Are they more natural acting than in previous games or do they still say random things like "I took a laser to my knee" when you pass them?
The random sentences spoken out loud was something that really irritated me in the previous games, nobody says stuff like that to a random person on the street without having been asked or having a severe mental problem.

In my experience it has been much better.

It's maybe not quite as natural feeling as Cyberpunk (which has become my benchmark for an alive feeling world) but in this regard it isn't too far off.

You can overhear NPC conversations, but they mostly feel like they are talking to each other and don't want to be interrupted by some rando. There are exceptions though. Cops/ security guards are remarkably chatty and will bluey things out at you, but at least when they do it isn't knee-arrow repetitive.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

Maybe it has been answered in this thread before, but how are the NPC's this time around? Are they more natural acting than in previous games or do they still say random things like "I took a laser to my knee" when you pass them?
The random sentences spoken out loud was something that really irritated me in the previous games, nobody says stuff like that to a random person on the street without having been asked or having a severe mental problem.

Guards actually do make a "laser to the knee" joke. Heard it twice now.

 

[NightReaver]

Guards actually do make a "laser to the knee" joke. Heard it twice now.

No way were they dropping that meme.

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

Games don't kill otherwise healthy GPU's. Not that Amazon game, not any other game.

They COULD back in the day, but these days there are so many thermal controls in there to throttle and otherwise prevent damage that this is pretty much impossible.

The Amazon game probably just teased out the defect in defective Nvidia GPU's, you know like we saw in the Space Invaders episode.

Modern GPU's are designed to take everything sent to them, and if they can't handle it, throttle. If they can't, it is the GPU that is defective, not the game.

What the Amazon game was doing was essentially not something that a GPU maker would expect any game to do in normal operation, though, as I understand it. In that sort of scenario, I think both parties share a bit of blame (along with Nvidia for allowing its drivers to make the GPU do that). If you're an engineer yourself, you know you don't necessarily code/blueprint things for scenarios that you assume to be impossible or just don't even cross your head as any reasonable person ever doing. Resistors and whatnot all have a "+/-" value for their actual resistance value since it isn't ideal, and likewise they have targets to meet at their factories that are probably based on common operation. We're constantly surprised by what humans are actually capable of doing, with or without any real intention or malice. Saying you can account for all scenarios is sort of like saying you can design perfection. Really sucks for the people whose cards burned up due to the sloppiness though.

Anyway, I had Starfield open all night while I slept. Had prime95 running, several browser windows, etc... it didn't crash overnight... but then I tried actually playing it for a bit and it did crash, afterwards.

One thing that I noticed that was interesting, is that for some reason the game only lets my GPU use about 75% of its TDP. It's really bizarre. Yet the GPU core is pinned at 99%, but the temps aren't as high as they would be normally, and hence overclocks higher than it would normally... because it's at a low TDP but high consumption. I'm wondering if this is what's causing it to crash. It's essentially trying an unstable overclock on a lower TDP than it should have, but slightly lower temperatures. Here's a quick image to illustrate.

Also, when alt tabbing back in, there's a large spike in the core frequency because the GPU is idle while the game is alt tabbed, so the core is cooler... I think that may also be causing some instability. I don't think this is related to my motherboard, RAM, or CPU at all now, though. CPU is running like a champ, memtest86 gave me no issues.

I've also been playing Hogwarts Legacy for about 7 hours straight now, 0 crashes. No issues. I notice that it's using up to 90-95%+ of the max rated TDP, and actually not boosting as high to begin with...

I tried turning the DLSS mod that I had off and the game actually started running smoother lol. Game was using a slight bit more of the TDP envelope, too:

I kind of doubt it'll stop crashing just because I turned DLSS off, but it's worth a shot I guess. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow when I wake up.