AMD has been in the sights of gamers since announcing its partnership with Starfield. Is the manufacturer preventing the Bethesda studio from integrating Nvidia’s DLSS into its game? It would seem not.
The case caused a stir last June: in order to promote its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology, AMD was suspected of preventing the studios they work with from offering a competing solution, here the DLSS from Nvidia and XeSS from Intel. Many games like STAR WARS: Jedi Survivor, Resident Evil 4 Remake or Callisto Protocol currently only offer the FSR option, admittedly compatible with all other platforms, but not allowing owners of Nvidia and Intel graphics cards to use solutions optimized for their hardware.
The announcement of an exclusive partnership between AMD and Bethesda last June for the release of Starfield added fuel to the fire. One of the most anticipated games of the year would therefore only offer the technology ofupscaling from AMD when it comes out? Questioned for several weeks on the subject, the brand took advantage of its recent announcements at Gamescom (and in particular the highly anticipated FSR 3) to answer questions from The Verge on the subject. And it looks like there’s nothing stopping Bethesda from offering Nvidia’s DLSS if the studio wanted it.
When is DLSS in Starfield?
Frank Azor, head of gaming at AMD, replied to the American site: “ If Bethesda wants to include DLSS in the game, they have our full support. “. This is a statement far from the ” No comment which prevailed until then when the question was posed frontally to the manufacturer this summer. Azor moderates his remarks, however, by declaring that on the occasion of this type of partnership, the financial stake is an incentive for the studios to prioritize the optimization and the functionalities of AMD cards and processors. But from there to offer pure and simple exclusivity, the manufacturer denies it.
There are also other issues for Bethesda that would encourage it to favor FSR over competing solutions: console gaming, and more specifically on the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S machines which will have exclusive rights to it (Besthesda has been acquired by Microsoft in 2020). These machines integrate AMD chips, in particular an RDNA 2 architecture GPU, they naturally support FSR technology to optimize the performance of such a demanding game. The studio would therefore be right, according to the manufacturer, to favor this technology rather than that of Nvidia at first.
Whether or not Nvidia’s DLSS will be integrated into Starfield at a later date remains to be seen. It is now easy for developers to offer these solutions in the game, especially if they have chosen engines like Unreal Engine or Unity. For others who use their own technologies like Bethesda, manufacturers like Nvidia or Intel are used to sending dedicated engineers to help them adapt a technology like DLSS to their own tools. This is the case of AMD for Starfield, which will benefit from an integration of FSR 2, we imagine it to be exemplary, we expect that of FSR 3 in a few months. We therefore hope that the space blockbuster will offer Nvidia’s DLSS by the end of the year.
In the meantime, some modders are already hard at work bringing Nvidia’s technology to Starfield soon after release. This is the case of PureDark, known for having integrated it into games like Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Skyrim And Elden Ring. If the developer has decided to charge for the use of his mod (not without controversy), other users in the community will offer their solution. We will then advise you to monitor the NexusMods site while waiting for an official integration of DLSS into the game.
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