Bethesda’s Partnership with AMD Benefits AMD GPUs and CPUs

Bethesda’s exclusive partnership with AMD for their upcoming game, Starfield, has clear advantages for AMD GPUs and CPUs over Intel and Nvidia systems. Digital Foundry conducted a detailed tech analysis of Starfield on PC and found that the game is more optimized for AMD hardware.

AMD is the “exclusive PC partner” for Starfield, and engineers from both Bethesda and AMD have worked together to optimize the game for Ryzen 7000 processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics cards. This collaboration has resulted in Starfield performing better on AMD GPUs and CPUs compared to Intel and Nvidia counterparts.

Digital Foundry discovered that the previous-generation AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT paired with Intel’s Core i9-12900K is around 46% faster than Nvidia’s previous-generation RTX 3080 on the same system. This significant margin shows that AMD GPUs outperform Nvidia ones in Starfield, which is abnormal for rasterized titles.

While average frame rates are lower with the RTX 3080, frame times also suffer with regular spiking on Nvidia GPUs. Digital Foundry suggests that ultra shadow quality might be the cause and recommends adjusting this setting to improve performance on older Nvidia GPUs.

On the CPU side, Digital Foundry found that enabling hyperthreading on Intel CPUs actually leads to worse average frame rates compared to disabling it. However, turning off SMT (AMD’s equivalent) does not have the same impact on frame rates but does cause spikier frame times.

In conclusion, Digital Foundry states that Starfield is optimized for AMD systems but not as much for Intel and Nvidia systems. They recommend that Bethesda works on better optimization for these platforms, while Intel and Nvidia should release new drivers over time.

Starfield director Todd Howard has defended the PC optimization of the game, stating that it is a next-gen PC title that pushes the boundaries of technology. However, many users are still wondering why the game doesn’t perform as well on their Intel and Nvidia systems. It is possible that future updates and driver releases will address these concerns.

Sources:

• Tom Warren, “Bethesda’s AMD-exclusive PC partnership has clear benefits for AMD GPUs and CPUs,” The Verge