This article is part of a directory: Starfield: Complete Guide & Walkthrough

The absence of DLSS for Starfield disheartened many fans when news of it broke out, but this nifty tech feature isn't totally out of the picture. Users rocking AMD cards should have no trouble using the built-in FSR2 option, but NVIDIA card owners will want to get DLSS into the game as soon as possible if they want to see improvements to performance and image quality.

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While it may sound complicated, adding an unsupported graphical feature to Starfield is surprisingly simple. Thanks to Bethesda's omnipresent modding community, everyone can add DLSS to their game by simply downloading and pasting a few files into their game's installation folder. Here's how to do it.

Adding DLSS to Starfield

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First, players need to download the necessary mod files. PureDark's Starfield Upscaler on NexusMods was the first to be released, and it works just as well as the other options. PureDark is also known for bringing DLSS3 support to Skyrim.

As far as mod installation goes, players must do the following (all relevant links can be found on the Nexus page above):

  1. Download the Starfield Upscaler mod and extract it to Starfield's root folder.
  2. Download UpscaleBasePlugin and extract it to the /Starfield/mods/ folder.
  3. Download nvngx_dlss.dll and paste it inside the /mods/UpscaleBasePlugin folder.

After doing all of these, players should have DLSS enabled for Starfield. To make sure that it works, press the END button on the keyboard to reveal a menu that controls the DLSS upscaler. The FSR2 option must be enabled in the game's options menu for this to work, as the mod essentially replaces that with DLSS.

Keep in mind that performance gains, even with DLSS enabled, will vary from machine to machine. If players get only small FPS increases, it most likely means their CPU is holding them back. Additionally, according to the mod page, PureDark's upscaler only supports DLSS2 used by RTX 20 and 30-series GPUs. It may not have any effect on gamers using any of the RTX 40-series cards since those primarily use DLSS3.

Players using high-end machines should have no trouble getting high FPS on Starfield using any graphical preset. Adding DLSS may make the game's performance more consistent and its overall picture quality less muddy. Those unsatisfied with the FPS counts they are getting with the game may want to use modded graphics presets on NexusMods or wait for a Starfield patch from Bethesda.

Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.