DLSS 3 arrives in Starfield – Modder brings Nvidia’s cutting-edge tech to Bethesda’s latest RPG

PureDark has modded Nvidia’s DLSS 3 tech into Starfield, delivering huge performance benefits

Bethesda’s latest RPG, Starfield, is now available to PC gamers who purchased the game’s Premium Edition through early access, and, disappointingly, the game has been released with AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 technology as the game’s only temporal super resolution technique. This means that Starfield lacks support for alternative upscaling technologies without mods, which is hugely disappointing for users of Nvidia or Intel GPUs, who can often achieve better upscaling results with DLSS and XeSS respectively. 

Thankfully, modders have already worked to add support for both DLSS and XeSS to Starfield, but these early mods do not add support for Nvidia’s newest DLSS technology, DLSS Frame Generation (DLSS 3). With DLSS 3, games can see its performance increase significantly though the addition of AI generated frames. 

PureDark, a PC modder behind many popular DLSS 2 and DLSS 3 modes for many recent releases, has now released a DLSS 3 mod for Starfield for subscribers to the modder’s Patreon page. Note that this mod has DRM protection and is only available to PureDark’s patreon subscribers. This mod can be used to replace Starfield’s FSR 2 implementation with Nvidia’s DLSS 2 Super Resolution technique, which can deliver more pleasing visual results, and allows gamers to enable DLSS Frame Generation, significantly increasing Starfield’s performance. 

In the video below, PureDark showcases his DLSS 3 mod in action, which can increase Starfield’s performance from 50-60 FPS on their Ryzen 7 5800X/RTX 4070 Ti based test system at 1440p to 90-110 FPS within the game’s demanding New Atlantis area.

PureDark has also expressed interest in creating an FSR 3 mod for Starfield, though the creation of such a mod would require AMD to release their FSR 3 SDK to the public. 

 Mods behind a Paywall

PureDark has previously released DLSS 3 mods for The Last of Us Part 1, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Elden Ring, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Sadly, all of these mods are only available to supporters of PureDark’s Patreon, and it is unknown if any of these mods will ever be made available for free to PC gamers.

PureDark’s Starfield DLSS mod will also be available exclusively to Patreon subscribers, limiting the number of gamers that will be able to benefit from DLSS in Starfield. The good news is that PureDark’s mod will be suitable for all users of RTX GPUs, adding DLSS 2 to RTX 20/30 series GPU users and DLSS 3 for users of RTX 40 series GPUs. While many gamers will be disappointed to see that this mod isn’t free, it is the mod creator’s decision to monetise their creation and that decision should be respected.

PC gamers can read our PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide for Starfield here.

You can join the discussion on PureDark’s DLSS 3 mod for Starfield on the OC3D Forums.