Starfield ‘Potato Mode’ mod lets this year’s hottest game run on a toaster

&xcust=2-1-2057465-1-0-0&sref=https://www.pcworld.com/feed" target="_blank">gamer slang for a computer lacking in graphical oomph, or at least, one that hasn’t been upgraded to play the latest high-end PC games. While there are plenty of new games coming out that can run even on the lightest of laptops, titles like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 do assume a rather higher level of number-crunching power than they used to. The Starfield Potato Mod comes from NexusMods publisher BulwarkHD, and it requires only a small file download and a few replacements.

Potato mods, designed to strip some of the modern graphical fidelity from the latest games are becoming a popular way for players to experience them on older or less-expensive PCs, are becoming a popular trend. (Even if they make an Epic software engineer cry every time one gets installed.) You can find potato modded games all over YouTube showing off AAA titles chugging along on budget hardware. They look terrible, but they run!

As PCGamer notes, just getting rid of high-res textures probably isn’t enough to run Starfield on a cow-patterned Gateway tower from 2005. The game’s huge maps, physics engine, and various other behind-the-scenes systems will still require a good bit of juice from both the CPU and GPU. But if you’re desperate to get the game playing in some kind of state without upgrading or buying a new machine, it might be worth a look — especially if your graphics card is running a modest amount of VRAM.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2057465/starfield-potato-mode-mod-lets-this-years-hottest-game-run-on-a-toaster.html

Created 2y | Sep 6, 2023, 9:20:04 PM


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