There are few games with as much excitement surrounding them as Starfield.

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Thankfully, we don't need to wait much longer, as the epic space RPG is mere days away from launch - with developer Bethesda now having confirmed the PC requirements, including the minimum and recommended specs to get the most out of the game.

Set to launch globally on 6th September 2023, PC players will be prepping their rigs to help boost Starfield's performance in any way possible. Not to forget, anyone can jump in ahead of release if they pick up Starfield early access.

In the meantime, there's still a lot of unanswered questions. Does Starfield run on Steam Deck? How about the Asus ROG Ally? Is DLSS 3 possible? With AMD being the "exclusive PC partner" of Starfied, what does that mean for those with FSR2 solutions? So many questions!

What we do know is that Starfield is now available for pre-order, with lots of different versions up for sale, including a pretty stunning Starfield Constellation edition that comes with lots of extra goodies.

Anyway, to help provide answers as best as we can (a lot of these details are still yet to be confirmed), head below for the latest Starfield PC requirements.

Minimum requirements to play Starfield on PC

The minimum PC specs for Starfield are as follows:

  • OS: Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7-6800K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required

Annoyingly, this doesn’t say what kind of experience we can expect - PC is yet to be determined until we get our hands on it. For reference, Starfield can run up to 4K at 30 frames per second on Xbox Series X.

The performance profile of the Xbox Series S is 1440p at 30 frames per second with FSR2 upscaling, so we can look at its equivalent PC specs to see if this is what Bethesda has in mind.

The Series S’s CPU is actually more akin to the Ryzen 2700X, which is more powerful than what they’ve listed here. This might be because the Series S shares memory between the CPU and the GPU, where PCs have their own memory pools.

The GPU equivalent is more akin to an RX 5500 XT or RTX 2050, however. Because it is able to share memory from a pool of 16GB, it can use much more VRAM than the 4GB available to these cards, making it much more useable despite being very similar spec-wise.

As such, PC users will need a GPU with enough VRAM and the RX 5700 and 1070 Ti both have 8GB of VRAM.

If you aren’t sure how your graphics card stacks up against the RX 5700 or GeForce 1070 Ti, these are broadly equivalent to the RX 6600 and Nvidia RTX 2060 Super.

With all that to consider, the minimum specs listed will probably offer an experience similar to the Series S, though if you are playing at 1080p, you might see frame rates closer to 60 – especially when using FSR2.

The recommended PC specs for Starfield are as follows:

  • OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5-10600K
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080
  • DirectX: Version 12
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 125 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: SSD Required

Similarly to the minimum spec sheet, we don’t actually know how these specs translate into actual performance.

What we can deduce is that the Xbox Series X is broadly equivalent to a PC equipped with a Ryzen 3600 (which is listed in the spec sheet) and an RTX 3060 Ti – this being fairly similar in performance to the RTX 2080, which is again what they recommend.

On the Xbox, however, we are getting a 4K experience locked to 30 frames per second with FSR2, which is typically not the preferred level of performance for PC users, as mouse input feels pretty sluggish.

These specs will almost certainly allow you to reach 60 frames per second and higher at 1080P and potentially 1440P – especially when using FSR2.

Will Starfield run on the Steam Deck?

Todd Howard told the Kinda Funny Games Xcast hosts that they will be implementing a big font mode for the smaller screens used by portable gaming PCs, such as the Steam Deck, but crucially stopped short of saying whether or not it would run on the system. With that, we suspect Starfield is in the works for the Steam Deck but officially nothing has been announced yet.

From our analysis, the Steam Deck might be able to run Starfield at 30 frames per second using FSR2 performance mode – though the game may look a little fuzzy as a result. On the small 7-inch display, however, it will be harder to pick out visual flaws.

We looked at the specs of the little machine to figure out whether it would be able to run at all.

The Steam Deck has a custom AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) that is a hybrid between different generations of technology. The CPU has 4 Zen 2 cores but uses an RDNA 2 integrated GPU that is only featured on Zen 3+ CPUs.

The CPU is somewhat equivalent to a Ryzen 5 2400 and the GPU is something akin to a GeForce 1050 or AMD RX 570, which is decidedly lower spec than the minimum recommended specifications for Starfield.

It is worth keeping in mind that the Steam Deck has a resolution of 1280x800, so its little APU can go a long way as it doesn’t have to reach the same 1080p that most PC gamers play at - but it has half the amount of CPU cores as the Series S, so it may struggle with CPU-intensive tasks such as keeping track of all your stolen sandwiches.

This might result in the game being a bit stuttery when there are lots of physics calculations taking place or when loading large chunks of data - like when you land on a planet.

Being an AMD-sponsored title, though, the game will most likely have a good implementation of FSR2, which will give the Steam Deck more of a fighting chance.

Will Starfield run on the Asus ROG Ally?

Arguably, Starfield will have a much better chance of running on the ROG Ally. Even though the ROG Ally has a 1080p screen, which places further strain on its GPU - making frame rates similar across the Deck and Ally - it has a much more capable CPU, with 8 cores and a more modern architecture.

Given the complexity of a game like Starfield, with many planets to visit and potentially millions of objects to track, CPU performance is crucial - so at the very least, we should see the game running smoother with fewer stutters, as it will load elements of the game much faster, even if the average frame rate is comparable.

Performance fluctuations will be less noticeable too as the Ally has a variable refresh rate display, meaning you won’t see any screen tearing.

The game will most definitely require liberal use of FSR2 as well, though – most likely in its performance setting too.

Read more on Starfield:

What's happening with AMD and Nvidia DLSS?

AMD is the "exclusive PC partner" of Starfield, meaning AMD's FSR is, for now, the exclusive support for upscaling technology.

Additionally, Starfield will be bundled with the newly announced AMD 7800 XT and AMD 7700 XT graphics cards.

At the time of writing, Bethesda has yet to confirm whether DLSS will be added to Starfield. The game developer has been hesitant about sharing details, with AMD gaming chief Frank Azor telling The Verge that "if they want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support".

Naturally, contract details are what are preventing either side from revealing what's planned. If there is AMD exclusivity involved in that contract, we likely won't find out until it expires – if at all.

Starfield will have FSR 2 at launch with FSR 3 announced by AMD in August. Again, whether that ends up coming to Starfield or not is yet to be seen.

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Cole Luke
Cole Luke
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