Optimization is a major point of contention among players in Starfield. A developer now allegedly shows why Starfield is performing poorly and proposes a fix.
After the official release of Starfield, the optimization of the game remains a significant topic. The comment from the head of Starfield that it is due to players’ hardware that the game is not running well has only fueled dissatisfaction further. Although the system requirements for Starfield are demanding, other games with similarly high requirements perform much better.
Now a Vulkan developer has spoken up and released a fix. He explains why Starfield runs so poorly on PCs.
Faulty software library causes problems in Starfield
What is behind the problems? The Vkd3d developer Hans-Kristian Arntzen explains on github that various issues are behind the crashes and performance problems of Starfield.
Simply put, Starfield utilizes a library called “Vkd3d”. Many games use this to implement the “Direct3D 12” API on Vulkan. In his post on github, the developer points out that Starfield has a number of inefficient practices that can lead to performance issues. He identifies two major problems.
The first problem: Starfield allegedly misallocates memory. The processor is responsible for memory management. Each CPU has a fixed-length virtual memory. However, Starfield assigns memory to the processor without regard to size. This is said to be the cause of most crashes and issues. Because when there is an error or instability, the game simply crashes.
The second problem: Starfield uses a Vkd3d function called ExecuteIndirect to give instructions to the GPU. But instead of clear instructions, there are only vague ones, causing the graphics card to work significantly harder. The GPU has to assess and evaluate the instructions itself.
The colleagues from Dualshockers compare this to a driver receiving contradictory instructions from his passenger. And the driver has to decide which turn to take at the next intersection on his own.
Furthermore, Starfield does not bundle these ExecuteIndirect commands, but rather overwhelms the GPU with them. This further increases the load on your graphics card.
Developer’s fix reduces the load on your graphics card in Starfield
What has the developer done? The Vulkan developer has released a solution for this problem. In his solution, all ExecuteIndirect commands are evaluated, and it is determined whether they even need to be processed.
This saves your graphics card a lot of work. Additionally, the requests to your graphics card are bundled with the fix and no longer sent individually, which also reduces the load.
What comes next? Whether Bethesda will implement the developer’s fix into their game remains questionable. On reddit, the performance of Starfield continues to be a huge topic. Some are also wondering how such poor programming could make it into a triple-A title.
Nevertheless, Starfield is considered the most stable Bethesda game by experts so far, after previous games had often been heavily buggy at release. Many players are still hopeful that Starfield will perform significantly better on PC in the future. Many players in the community are currently expressing their dissatisfaction with the performance of Starfield.
Starfield without fast hardware: You can also play Starfield without a fast graphics card. Read more about it directly on MeinMMO:
