Shattered Space unplayable performance issues

[mav303]

Hello folks,

I haven't played Starfield since its release last year and have been waiting for future updates.

A good 2 weeks ago I started playing Starfield extensively. In these 2 weeks I had to force myself to enjoy the game, because I still think that the game is always unfinished, but there are parts and quests in the game that are really well staged. Anyway, I was very happy about the DLSS support and the performance has improved a lot compared to the vanilla version. I now have a constant 60 FPS in the game (I have a frame limit of 60 FPS active in the Riva Tuner, that's all I need).

Now to my actual problem, I've known Bethesda for quite a while. I was afraid that with the release of Shattered Space not only the new addon will be buggy, but also the main game will have problems again.

After installing the addon, I have constant FPS drops from 60 FPS to 58 FPS and back to 60 FPS, this goes on all the time, with a constant stutter of the game. From time to time the game freezes, the FPS goes down to 0, the PC hangs and a short time later it continues to lag. I have tried everything possible, drivers, system settings, graphics settings, nothing helps.

Only when I deactivate or delete the addon on Steam does the game run as it did before the patch. I'm not interested in playing Shattered Space yet, as I'm only level 30 with my character and want to finish the main game first, but Steam forces me to install this addon every time.

So every time I start the game, this stupid addon runs in the background and then installs automatically. It's just annoying. I wanted to give the game another chance, but this way it's unplayable for me.

Does anyone have an idea?

I have an MSI RTX 3080TI Gaming Trio, 32GB Ram and an Intel Core i7 12700K 12 with Win11, the computer is now only in the midfield, but the configuration should more than ok with the game.

thanks in advance!

[Just Chill]

I blame the "phantom"-shader for.
Have had harsh FPS-drops too (especially in the end battle that was annoying).

I've lowered all my settings to Medium before and won't go further down.

[mav303]

Originally posted by Just Chill:

I blame the "phantom"-shader for.
Have had harsh FPS-drops too (especially in the end battle that was annoying).

I've lowered all my settings to Medium before and won't go further down.

Exactly, no matter which graphics setting I use it makes no difference. Normally the game runs absolutely smoothly indoors. But even indoors I now have this stuttering. It's annoying, I wanted to finally play the game after a year. I hate these automatic updates on Steam for single player games. I don't need this Shattered Space right now and would rather wait half a year until Bethesda is able to make the addon playable. But apparently a lot of people are playing it. But they will probably have 4000 series cards with frame gen active.

[oak]

Just de-select the DLC in the game properties in Steam before you launch?

Doesn't fix whatever issue is plaguing you, but if you want to run the game without the DLC installed at all, it's definitely possible to do.

[athila_j]

Friend, before these big updates I always played without having any performance problems. Post updates, it became impossible to play. In the Menu I get 60FPS, but when I exit it drops suddenly to 15FPS. My PC configurations are more than sufficient and my Windows and Video Card are all up to date. I simply uninstalled it and gave up. Now we just have to wait a few more days to see if Bethesda fixes this.

[mav303]

Originally posted by oak:

Just de-select the DLC in the game properties in Steam before you launch?

Doesn't fix whatever issue is plaguing you, but if you want to run the game without the DLC installed at all, it's definitely possible to do.

I try that all the time, but every time I start the game the checkbox is automatically activated again and it downloads. I then have to constantly press the pause button on Steam

[Just Chill]

Originally posted by mav303:

I try that all the time, but every time I start the game the checkbox is automatically activated again and it downloads. I then have to constantly press the pause button on Steam

Do you have a *.NAM-file in your game file folder that is named as the DLC?

As that one forces it to be loaded even if you deactivate it. That's a thing since New Vegas and annoyed me back then already. oO

You also need to remove the *.NAM-file from your game folder, aside of deactivating it in Steam.

[mav303]

Originally posted by Just Chill:

Originally posted by mav303:

I try that all the time, but every time I start the game the checkbox is automatically activated again and it downloads. I then have to constantly press the pause button on Steam

Do you have a *.NAM-file in your game file folder that is named as the DLC?

As that one forces it to be loaded even if you deactivate it. That's a thing since New Vegas and annoyed me back then already. oO

You also need to remove the *.NAM-file from your game folder, aside of deactivating it in Steam.

Thanks for your tip, unfortunately I don't have a *.NAM file in the Starfield game folder I think I read somewhere that this feature has not been implemented by Steam (despite many requests). I can understand why this function is deactivated in multiplayer. But when I'm in singleplayer, I'd like to decide for myself what updates I want to install. Especially with developers like Bethesda, you never know what you're going to get.

[sleepygaymer]

Originally posted by athila_j:

Friend, before these big updates I always played without having any performance problems. Post updates, it became impossible to play. In the Menu I get 60FPS, but when I exit it drops suddenly to 15FPS. My PC configurations are more than sufficient and my Windows and Video Card are all up to date. I simply uninstalled it and gave up. Now we just have to wait a few more days to see if Bethesda fixes this.

It's now the 13th and they have not fixed anything.

[Sparki]

I have exactly the same problems....I tried everything possible...the game does not run with the dlc.
I reinstalled a few times, deleted pipeline cache 10 times...etc. etc.
The game is running for a few minutes and then it is unplayable again.
Before I played 440h without any performance issues.
I hope they will fix this soon.

[visdomancer]

So, was anyone able to fix this issue?

[Neo]

Sounds like you may benefit from forcing the game to recompile the shaders, sometimes issues can arise and often re doing the shaders fixes problems for some users.

You can do that by upgrading your graphics driver and the game will automatically recompile for you when you next load the game up, or if you already have the latest driver, you can follow this guide to force the game to do it anyway.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3213331733

[visdomancer]

Sadly, recompiling shaders did not solve the issue: micro stuttering here and there, space combat is unplayable as soon enenemy ships start firing lasers.
__________________________________________________________
NVIDIA system information report created on: 02/05/2025 12:38:35
NVIDIA App version: 11.0.2.312
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 11 Home Single Language, Version 10.0.26100
DirectX runtime version: DirectX 12
Driver: Game Ready Driver - 572.16 - Thu Jan 30, 2025
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700F
RAM: 64.0 GB
Storage (4): SSD - 3.6 TB,SSD - 3.6 TB,+2 more

Graphics card
GPU processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
Direct3D feature level: 12_1
CUDA cores: 7168
Graphics clock: 2505 MHz
Resizable bar: Yes
Memory data rate: 21.00 Gbps
Memory interface: 192-bit
Memory bandwidth: 504.048 GB/s
Total available graphics memory: 44971 MB
Dedicated video memory: 12282 MB GDDR6X
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 32689 MB
Video BIOS version: 95.04.69.00.7a
IRQ: Not used
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen3

Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (recommended)
Refresh rate: 240 Hz
Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)
Display technology: G-SYNC Compatible
HDCP: Supported

[Neo]

Originally posted by visdomancer:

Sadly, recompiling shaders did not solve the issue: micro stuttering here and there, space combat is unplayable as soon enenemy ships start firing lasers.
__________________________________________________________
NVIDIA system information report created on: 02/05/2025 12:38:35
NVIDIA App version: 11.0.2.312
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 11 Home Single Language, Version 10.0.26100
DirectX runtime version: DirectX 12
Driver: Game Ready Driver - 572.16 - Thu Jan 30, 2025
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700F
RAM: 64.0 GB
Storage (4): SSD - 3.6 TB,SSD - 3.6 TB,+2 more

Graphics card
GPU processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
Direct3D feature level: 12_1
CUDA cores: 7168
Graphics clock: 2505 MHz
Resizable bar: Yes
Memory data rate: 21.00 Gbps
Memory interface: 192-bit
Memory bandwidth: 504.048 GB/s
Total available graphics memory: 44971 MB
Dedicated video memory: 12282 MB GDDR6X
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 32689 MB
Video BIOS version: 95.04.69.00.7a
IRQ: Not used
Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen3

Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (recommended)
Refresh rate: 240 Hz
Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)
Display technology: G-SYNC Compatible
HDCP: Supported

I've just been doing a little looking around and apparently problems have been reported with the 572.16 Nvidia driver. My previous post advised to install the latest driver, but perhaps hold off that for now, or in your case, if recompiling shaders didn't work for you, you could try reverting back to the previous driver version which was 566.36.