AMD's Starfield graphics driver lands, promises major performance boosts

Starfield is almost here, and while everyone is waiting for their preloads to unlock, AMD has delivered a brand-new graphics driver for PC players. The AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.8.2 WHQL-certified release is almost entirely focused on the Bethesda RPG, bringing major optimizations for its range of graphics cards as well as a small warning for ultra-wide monitor users.

AMD's testing had been done on its high-end RX 7900XTX and RX 7900XT GPUs, with both cards performing 16% better in Starfield with the new 23.8.2 driver compared to 23.8.1. The game had been running at 4K during these tests, though exact FPS and graphics settings have not been shared.

The rest of the testing rig had contained a Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, and 32GB DDR5 RAM, with everything running on Windows 11. The company also noted that setting Dynamic Resolution in Starfield to 75-78% range while running ultra-wide monitors can cause driver timeouts or visual corruption. AMD is working with Bethesda to resolve this and recommends players to set a different Dynamic Resolution if the issue pops up.

Starfield goes live on September 1 for Premium and Constellation Edition owners across Xbox Series X|S and PC. Standard edition buyers as well as Game Pass subscribers will gain access to the sci-fi RPG on September 6. While delayed compared to other platforms, preloading is now live for the Steam version too.

Coming back to the driver, the 23.8.2 release has a single fix included in it, which is carrying good news for some Baldur's Gate 3 players:

• Application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Baldur's Gate 3 with DirectX® 11 API set on certain systems with Radeon™ RX 7000 series GPUs.

Known issues are these:

• Performance Metrics Overlay may report N/A for FPS on various games.
• Audio may intermittently become out of sync with video when recording from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition with AV1 codec.
• Display may not reach correct brightness with certain games on select SAMSUNG™ FreeSync Premium Pro monitors or TVs with local dimming setting enabled.

The new WHQL-certified AMD Adrenalin Edition 23.8.2 driver is now available to AMD Radeon users. It can be upgraded to via the Radeon Settings app on Windows. A standalone download link can be found on the release notes page here.