Even though it was announced months ago that Starfield on the PC would not feature any upscaler other than AMD’s FSR, I figured we’d see at least one mod that would add DLSS or even Intel’s XeSS. And guess what? We’re not even a day from the game being released via early access, and there’s already a mod available, and unlike what some had thought, this one is free.
Called the Starfield Upscaler – Replacing FSR2 with DLSS or XESS, and this mod can be found on Nexusmods. Thanks to the efforts of PureDark, whose name should sound familiar as he has created a DLSS mod for various other Bethesda games, PC gamers can now enjoy better frame rates. While this mode only supports DLSS 2 and not DLSS 3, and Frame Generation is not supported, I’m sure not many will complain, as DLSS 2 is superior to AMD’s upscaler. I can’t speak on behalf of Intel’s XeSS as I’ve never used it. Installing this mod is simple, and the instructions are on the mod’s page.
If you want to use DLSS, you will need a Nvidia RTX series card, meaning any RTX 2000, RTX 3000, or RTX 4000 series cards. Also, since the game has no quality/performance/balanced/ultra settings, using the mod is a bit tricky. Instead, you’ll only have access to a render resolution slider, so keep in mind that 100% is DLAA, 66% is Quality, and 50% is Performance when using this mod.
According to Puredark, the Reshade included in this mod has a compatibility issue with Steam overlay. So, you’ll have to turn off that by removing the d3d12.dll file from his mod, which disables ReShade. But if you want that, you must turn off the Steam overlay.
While installing this mod, toss PureDark some money so he can get himself a coffee over at Ko-Fi.
But there you go. The first of many Starfield performance mods are out in the wild.