Starfield Low FPS Fix: Best PC Performance Settings

Players have reported some PC performance issues in Starfield, which was released recently and is one of the most anticipated sci-fi games of all time. As with every new game, players on older PCs in particular continue to face these issues. Starfield's optimization issues are under players' microscope, and the main cause is the low FPS problem. So what can we do about it? Here is the answer...

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What Causes the Low FPS Problem in Starfield?

As many have pointed out, the problem stems from the game depending on the CPU to do its work. Starfield is a very CPU-bound game. This means most of the processing and performance calculations in the game are done within the CPU cores. So no matter how good a GPU you use, you cannot get big performance gains.

However, we have come with some solution suggestions that will help you reduce stuttering and lag and enjoy a more pleasant gameplay experience:

How Do You Fix Low FPS in Starfield?

Adjust Your Graphics Settings

Adjusting the in-game graphics settings greatly improves your PC performance. You can set your graphics settings as follows:

• Crowd Density : Medium
• Shadow Quality : High or Medium
• Volumetric Lighting : Medium
• Motion Blur : Off
• Depth of Field : Off

Check Your GPU Drivers

Both AMD and Nvidia have released the game's newest drivers so that your GPU can deliver the best performance for Starfield on PC. So go to your card manufacturer's website and download the latest drivers.

Enable Upscaling With Mods

After adjusting your graphics settings, you should turn on the upscaling settings. Starfield comes with support for AMD FSR 2.0 technology, which scales the image down to a lower resolution and then upscales it to higher fidelity through AI, improving image quality and performance. Of course, it has downsides such as image ghosting during movement. But if you can ignore such minor annoyances, FSR 2.0 can be your savior. The game does not come with DLSS support, or even XeSS support for Intel cards. However, thanks to some quick modders, you can use DLSS 3.0 and XeSS in Starfield.

Disable Fullscreen Optimization

Windows has a feature called Fullscreen Optimizations, in which a fullscreen game benefits from performance gains and does not have to share resources with other programs. Starfield can benefit greatly from turning this feature on:

• Right-click Starfield on Steam and select the “Browse local files” option.
• Right-click the Starfield.exe file in the installation location and open the game's properties.
• Under Properties, go to Compatibility and enable the “Disable fullscreen optimizations” option.

Set Starfield's Process Priority to High

You can set the CPU process priority for Starfield to high, so that CPU resources are used to run the game smoothly instead of running other processes in the background:

• Open Task Manager using the Windows keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + Shift + Esc”.
• Find Starfield inside Task Manager.
• Right-click it and set its priority to "high".

You can fix the low FPS problem in Starfield with these methods! If that was not enough, you will need to submit a support request.