How to fix stuttering on PC in Starfield

Playing a brand new game and realizing that it doesn’t run the way you want it to can be frustrating. Take Starfield, for example. This is a hefty AAA title that requires decent PC specs to run it. Even with the latest tech, you may come into contact with low FPS and stuttering issues. These are very common issues, so let’s dive into how you can fix stuttering on your PC in Starfield.

Note: If you’re experiencing this other common Starfield issue where your Steam game is unpacking slow, read our guide on how to fix that.

Starfield: How to fix stuttering and performance issues on PC

Have you run into some annoying stuttering and performance drops while playing Starfield on your PC? You’re in luck, because we know a few decent solutions to your issue. How you can fix stuttering and low FPS in Starfield on PC is by lowering the graphics quality, updating your drivers, and other helpful solutions. Continue reading for more information on how to get rid of these issues.

Lower the graphics setting in Starfield

If your PC isn’t fully capable of running a game, and you’re playing it on high settings, you may experience some annoying stuttering issues. The easiest solution is to lower the graphic settings inside the game itself.

Head to Display settings, and you’ll see along list of toggles to fiddle with. You can change the overall graphic quality, or toggle individual settings. I recommend keeping the game on medium to low settings, and you should notice a difference. Also, settings like Motion Blur, Crowd Density, and Vsync can affect your frame rate. Vsync being on should help with this issue, while you should turn off Motion Blur and lower Crowd Density.

Keep your drivers updated

Your graphics driver being behind on some updates can harshly affect how games run. Personally, I have a NVIDIA GPU, which means I can use the GeForce Experience application to constantly keep my GPU updated. Since it’s the graphics driver, it’s most responsible for how your game runs. If you have an AMD GPU, instead you can check for GPU updates here:

1. Search for Device Manager in Windows
2. Look under ‘Display adaptors’
3. Right-click your GPU and select ‘Update driver’

The unfortunate thing about Windows is the fact that it usually doesn’t know when the latest GPU update is out. Luckily, searching for your GPU on this AMD Drivers and Support website can lead you to the proper update download.

Set Starfield priority to high

If none of those solutions are working, try this one. You can actually tell your PC to allocate more resources to certain programs. Now your PC will try even harder to make Starfield run smoother.

1. Open Task Manager
2. Go under the ‘Details’ tab
3. Right-click Starfield
4. Click ‘High’ under ‘Select priority’

Install Starfield on an SSD

Certain new games nowadays are nearly unplayable on hard drives. Make sure you have an SSD, and tell Starfield to install onto that drive. SSDs are built to run high-powered games, and work a lot better that HDDs do. Starfield recommends that you use an SSD for the game anyway, so be cautious of what type of storage drive you have.

Install the upscaler mod

Many newer games now ship with the ability to use the latest technology from graphics cards. Upscaling renders a game at a lower quality and then uses AI to fill in the blanks, giving beautiful FPS and high resolution with minimal strain to your card. Starfield only shipped with AMD’s upscaler. However, with this mod, you and also utilize both the upscaler from Nvidia and Intel.

Starfield is available on Steam.