AMD recently announced its collaboration with Bethesda for the highly-anticipated sci-fi RPG Starfield game. What better way to celebrate the partnership than to release a new gaming bundle? According to Newegg, AMD is seemingly preparing a Starfield bundle for the company's Ryzen 7000 lineup, encompassing some of the best CPUs for gaming.
The minisite titled "AMD Starfield Game Bundle Promotion Store" confirms that all Ryzen 7000 SKUs, spanning from the entry-level Ryzen 5 7600 to the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D, are eligible for the promotion. AMD hasn't officially announced the bundle yet, so the terms and conditions of the promotion remain a mystery. The game was originally set to come out on November 22 launch, but Bethesda has pushed Starfield to September 6, 2023. It's logical to assume that AMD's announcement will come soon to give consumers time to make Ryzen 7000 purchases before the title launches.
AMD's previous Star Wars Jedi: Survivor game bundle for Ryzen 7000 processors concluded on June 30; therefore, the chipmaker is preparing a follow-up to continue enticing consumers to purchase the company's Zen 4-powered chips. It's uncertain if AMD will extend the promotion to the brand's Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards. We did a quick search on Newegg, but nothing showed up so far. With the prior Resident Evil 4 game bundle having recently ended on July 1, the RDNA 3-based products may need a small push to maintain sales.
Starfield features many AMD technologies, including FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (FSR 2), on day one, so it makes sense that AMD would want to promote the title. Unfortunately, AMD's exclusivity didn't bode well with some gamers since Starfield, being an AMD-sponsored title, will lack support from rival upscalers, such as Nvidia Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Intel Xe Super Sampling (XeSS). One renowned modder (PureDark) has pledged to implement DLSS 3 support into Starfield, in the early access, at least.
The minimum system recommendations for Starfield are similarly demanding as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The game requires a hexa-core chip, such as the Ryzen 5 2600X or Core i7-6800K, 16GB of memory, a Radeon RX 5700 or GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, and 125GB of solid-state storage as a minimum. Given the nature of the game, it'll be interesting to see if it'll leverage Microsoft's DirectStorage technology for faster loading times. Now that Microsoft owns Bethesda, there's a good chance that we may see the feature in Starfield.
Starfield is up for pre-purchase on Steam for $69.99, while the Digital Premium Edition will set you back $99.99. No one will purchase a Ryzen 7000 chip just for the game since the Ryzen 5 7600, at $223, is the cheapest Zen 4 SKU. Nonetheless, it's a nice added plus for consumers that plan to upgrade to the Zen 4 platform. For others who don't intend to buy a Zen 4 chip or are interested in owning the game permanently, Starfield will also be available on Microsoft Game Pass, starting at $9.99 monthly on the PC.