Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR have become essential parts of PC gaming in recent years to allow gamers to keep up with the graphical capabilities of modern titles, especially at 1440p and 4K resolutions. The technology works by lowering the resolution of the image and then artificially upscaling it which increases the overall performance while sacrificing very little in terms of visual quality. Starfield is a very beautiful-looking game and is also very demanding, which means that FSR and DLSS are essential for players wanting to squeeze as many frames per second as they can from the game. The problem, Nvidia’s DLSS isn’t natively included in Starfield which has left the game not living up to expectations among Nvidia GPU users.
How To Get DLSS 2.0 On Starfield
Bethesda partnered with AMD for the launch of Starfield, which in part meant that AMD’s FSR technology was implemented into the game at the cost of not including Nvidia’s DLSS. Because of this, many Nvidia users have seen lower frame rates than expected, but modders quickly found a solution.
One modder, PureDark, quickly released a free mod on Nexus Mods to add DLSS 2.0 to Starfield, with it increasing frame rates up to 30 fps compared to what gamers were seeing beforehand. If you want to add DLSS 2.0 to Starfield and replace FSR2 you can download the Starfield Upscaler mod here. There are some other DLSS mods online, but this one has proved to be the most popular so far.
$5 DLSS 3.5 Mod Has Been Cracked
In addition to releasing the DLSS 2.0 mod for free, PureDark locked a mod to add DLSS 3.5 and Frame Generation to Starfield behind his Patreon paywall, charging $5 for gamers to add it to their game. Just like Starfield itself, it didn’t take a crack team long to remove the DRM from the mod to make it available for free to everyone on the r/CrackWatch sub-Reddit.
Locking a mod behind a paywall has caused mixed reactions among the gaming community, with some understanding the reasoning for wanting to be paid for the hard work creating the mod, while some believe that Nvidia should sue PureDark for trying to sell its technology.
Bethesda did previously consider charging for official mods for Skyrim before later deciding against it and just leaving it to the community. As of the time of writing, there are over 129,000 mods across both versions of Skyrim and over 77,000 mods across the Fallout franchise on Nexus Mods, so it is safe to say the community proved that the developers didn’t need to get involved in modding.
