Getting ready to play Starfield on an AMD GPU? New drivers offer big performance boost and warning to players with ultrawide monitors
If you're waiting patiently for Starfield to drop, spend that time wisely by downloading AMD's latest graphics driver package. The new driver version coming ahead of the game's launch, promises up to a 16% increase in performance for Starfield at 4K on the red team's top cards, the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. That's definitely worth a look.
The new driver package highlights, according to AMD:
There's also a word of warning to Starfield players: under very specific circumstances, you may run into «intermittent driver timeout or visual corruption when dynamic resolution is set to 75–78% with certain ultrawide monitors.» A very specific issue, indeed.
AMD has partnered with Bethesda for the release of Starfield. That's why there's a limited edition RX 7900 XTX with Starfield plastered all over it, and why we're expecting FSR upscaling support only at launch, without Nvidia's DLSS in the mix. AMD has said Bethesda can add DLSS support to Starfield, but that's not confirmed to happen yet. We're likely to see modders drop DLSS into the game, anyways.
The new driver package, version 23.8.2, is namely to offer support for Starfield, though there's also a bug fix for Baldur's Gate 3 in the mix.
In my testing of Baldur's Gate 3, the game plays nicely on AMD cards with the Vulkan API enabled, which means you might want to consider switching to that API anyways.
Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
