How to fix lag and crashes in Doom The Dark Ages

Doom The Dark Ages is available on advanced access with the full launch coming soon, but the performance so far has been dodgy to say the least.

While console users have found things pretty smooth until now, the same can’t be said about those who are on PC. A major issue earlier prevented Nvidia users from being able to start advanced access on time, but that problem has been fixed. However, freezes, crashes, and lag-related incidents have been pretty common, and here are some tips and tricks to try in the meantime.

Doom The Dark Ages lag and crash fix

It appears that the current version of the game on PC has some optimization issues. If you’re using an Nvidia graphics card, make sure to update your drivers. There’s a false error message that pops up when you start the game for the first time. You can ignore it and proceed to play, but make sure that your drivers are updated to the latest version.

It’s better to cap the max FPS to 60 for the time being. This will smooth the FPS; if you don’t put a limit on, there’s a chance for the client to push it to an unrealistic target, and cause stutters in the process. There are a few incidents on Doom The Dark Ages‘ Steam forum about some players encountering crashes when the FPS drops suddenly. Putting a cap on maximum FPS will hopefully prevent that issue.

For the time being, it’s better to reduce the overall graphics settings (even if your hardware can handle it). This will reduce the load on your setup, and ensure that stutters and lag, however occasional, don’t happen at all. Additionally, you can turn off V-Sync, as that will decrease the load on your setup.

These are the current settings I have been running on my system. It uses an RTX 3060 and Ryzen 5600G (not amazing, but gets the work done). These settings have prevented any incidents of crashes and FPS drops consistently. There have been a few random stutters, but it’s ignorable (happens if there are too many enemies at the same location).

• Window Mode: Fullscreen/Borderless Window
• Monitor: Your default device
• Aspect Ratio: 16:9
• Resolution: 1920×1080 (it can be 1440P as well)
• Refresh Rate: Value that matches your monitor
• Vertical Sync: Off
• Present From Compute: On
• Resolution Scaling Mode: Dynamic
• Resolution Scaling Target FPS: 60
• Performance Metrics: Off
• Field of View: 90
• Chromatic Aberration: On
• Depth of Field: On
• Sharpening: 1.5
• Film Grain: 1
• Upscaler: Personal Preferences
• Nvidia Reflex Mode: On
• Enable HDR: Off
• Motion Blur: Off (Can be kept on during cutscenes)
• Motion Blur: High
• Motion Blur Quality: Medium
• Overall Quality Slider: Custom
• Shadow Quality: Medium
• Reflection Quality: Medium
• Lights Quality: Medium
• Particles Quality: Medium
• Decal Quality: Medium
• Water Quality: Medium
• Volumetrics Quality: Medium
• Texture Filtering Quality: High
• Geometric Quality: Medium
• Shading Quality: Medium
• Directional Occlusion: Off

I am hopeful that Bethesda will be pushing out a day-one patch with the full release, which should fix plenty of optimization issues that have taken place on PC so far.