DOOM: The Dark Ages

DOOM: The Dark Ages

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How to Stop Constant Freezing & Crashing
By ♡RileyyisSleepyy♡
Have you been one of the unfortunate souls who was super excited to play this game on launch only to find out Bethesda once again released a good game in a buggy and nearly unplayable state? If you're reading this text than I assume you are like me and can't play the game for more than 5 to 10 minutes without the entire game freezing and forcing you to close via task manager...No matter what you've tried the game still won't go past a cinematic, new combat area, or just randomly freezing whenever it wants...Well luckily for you after scouring the internet I have found the solution!

(Desclaimer: None of the fixes in this guide were found directly by me, All of them were found from very helpful DOOM fans in the r/Doom Doom: The Dark Ages Tech Support Megathread.)

link here -->https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/s/d9BvSnu5p2
   
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Video Settings
The first and simplest solution I've found (credit to u/dfgvbsrdfgaregzf) is to go to your video settings ingame, near the middle of the "Display" section and disable "Present From Compute". I'm unsure what exactly this does but from what comments on r/Doom's Tech Support Megathread it has fixed the crashes for several people.

You will no longer be able to do any resolution scaling and your game may run at a less viable framerate. To solve this you'd want to go to the "Video" section and change your Upscaler. I personally use DLSS and use specifically "Performance" mode in the Super Resolution settings. It does not allow for the best showing of the game's beautiful graphics but it does clock me at my monitor's maximum framerate consistently.
GPU Drivers
If that did not work for you or if you don't want to mess with your frames, there's another easy solution you can try instead that's worked for me and many other NVIDIA users like me. (credit to u/Jumpy89) Downgrading/Rolling back your GPU driver. For whatever reason, Doom: The Dark Ages does not like seemingly any of the latest GPU drivers no matter the manufacturer. For me (NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super) I downgraded my GPU Drivers to Driver Version 576.28

Upon launching the game you will get a popup which warns you that "Updated drivers are required."...but you can just ignore it and hit play. It doesn't actually matter

This seems to be the most widely successful way to stop the game from crashing, according to myself and many many commenters from the previously mentioned Megathread
Hardware Acceleration
If you've tried those two solutions and it's STILL crashing, there are two more solutions I have been made aware of but have not tried myself, so take these next two with the knowledge that these are tips from a few helpful DOOM fans on the Megathread (u/AL4M4N & u/Thomas7249) for the advice that hopefully helps if the two I've mentioned haven't already!

The first is to go to your computer's settings and turn on "Hardware-Accelerated GPU scheduling".
If you are on Windows 10/11 this can be found in your system settings.

Open your settings and then click "System"

scroll down until you see "Graphics Settings"

Then right at the top you should see this setting.

This feature gives your GPU a higher priority and allows for less latency. And of course as it says on screen you do have to restart your PC. After you reset you can set DOOM to a high performance graphics perference so it can be more prioritized and less likely to freeze. Your GPU may also have specific Hardware Acceleration settings but mine does not so I would not know.

Integrated Graphics
If you've tried ALL of that and the game still crashes, the last thing you can try is manually going to your PC's BIOS menu (Pressing your PC's specific BIOS key on startup) and switching your integrated graphics (usually named Internal Graphics or IGPU) to Off. This should allow your PC to properly prioritize your GPU. I cannot show any photos because I have no idea how I'd screenshot from my BIOS menu.
Outro
Thank you for reading my guide. And another big thank you to everyone in the Megathread for providing all of these solutions. I would've refunded this game before I found these solutions! I hope I've helped solve the freezing issue for you.

Have fun and enjoy this new DOOM game without the worry of anymore forced closures and restarts

7 Comments
♡RileyyisSleepyy♡  [author] 27 May @ 3:39pm 
@Doomguy1710 If you have medal or other clipping software you'll have to fully end the task before launching the game as they're having issues with overlays.

However if you don't have any clipping software or that doesn't fix it, you can also go to the game's properties and in launch options, copy and paste this command line below:

+com_skipIntroVideo 1 +r_mode -1 +r_customWidth 1280 +r_CustomHeight 720 +r_fullscreen 0
Doomguy1710 26 May @ 4:30pm 
IS there anyway to change the settings from outside the game? Currently I can't even launch the game myself it just is a black screen after the initial loadings occur
♡RileyyisSleepyy♡  [author] 25 May @ 11:33am 
Nice to see all the people that didn't need this guide and had 0 issues launching. Please note that just because YOUR experience was fine. does not mean everybody's was:steamthumbsup:
Ario 25 May @ 8:52am 
I just finished Doom TDA in the last 2 days (gamepass). For almost 14 hours of playthrough there was not a single crash. No staters were noticed either. Settings - 1080p, Ultra, DLSS Q, FG. 100-140 fps

R7 5700x, 32gb ram, RTX 4060, the game was launched with nvme ssd Samsung 980 - 500 gb
prashinar_89 24 May @ 3:47pm 
Dunno man, i've been playing since day 0 of regular version (15th May) with 0 issue. RTX 4070 Super, Ryzen 5 5600, 1440p DLSS DLAA and Quality frames never droped below 75FPS (Average, 1%Low are 66 with DLAA) while with DLSS Quality mode its rocking over 100FPS. I only encountered 2 bugs on 15 chapter and were not related to performance but items and enemy spawn.

Although i've heard it's disaster on RTX 50xx cards.
Settings: Ultra Nightmare with motion blur and depth of field turned off.
SΩLARIUS 21 May @ 3:52am 
It seems to have fixed the issue for me, at least for now
Thank you !!!
♡RileyyisSleepyy♡  [author] 20 May @ 9:29am 
It seems like steam considers a link to Reddit a malicious link…you know what…based