Todd Howard talks about Starfield optimization, but players and Digital Foundry specialists still cannot seem to find it. An SSD drive was specified in the system requirements, but even that does not save players from all the issues with the game.
Compusemble demonstrated that a PCIe Gen5 SSD will not protect against stuttering (“game hitching”). At certain moments, 100% utilization can be observed with a Read Rate just over 850 MB/s. Heavy load is observed even at low settings. For comparison: in Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, at ~40-45% utilization, the Read Rate is several times higher.
Opinions suggest that Bethesda utilizes SSD capabilities inefficiently in Starfield: data is read in small chunks without using a read queue.
Video: https://youtu.be/IbaYeiAr_30