Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Getting extremely tired of frequent crashing...

Ever since the games retail release I've been crashing constantly... Never when first starting the game or at the main menu... sometimes I crash in the first 5 minutes of gameplay (always after I've started the game proper after loading screens, etc), sometimes I crash after an hour, sometimes I don't crash at all after 3-4 hour play sessions.

The AMD Crash report suggests it's a driver timeout, (I don't currently have logs in front of me).

GPU: AMD 7900xtx
GPU Hotspot Temp: Never seen higher than 52C while playing.
Driver Version: 23.7.2 (July 20, 2023) and I've tried *every* WHQL release going back as far as 23.3.1 (March 2023). Edit: Yes, between every driver change I did a full clean of AMD drivers with their AMD Driver Removal Tool in Safe Mode.
Driver Settings: Tried SAM (BAR) -on- and -off-.
CPU: Ryzen 7 3700x (This will be getting upgraded in the near future)
CPU Temp: Can't recall right now, but it's been stable enough to run other extremely taxing games for extended periods without to mobo going into panic mode and shutting everything down.
Bios Settings: Tried XMP -on- and -off-
Memory: 32gb @ 3600mhz (w/ XMP on) w/ HCI test suggesting no issues.
HDD: 2tb PCIE4 NVME w/ over 1tb free space w/ no SMART errors reported.
OS: Win 11 Stable Branch w/ all current updates applied, fresh install as of less than 3 months ago.
Vulkan: Corrupts drivers on crash necessitating a full driver clean in safe mode and reinstall.
DX11: Has the courtesy of not corrupting GPU drivers when it crashes but if I don't reboot the game flickers irritatingly.
Game Settings: Ultra Settings w/ FSR -off-, Borderless Window @ 4k,120hz, Triple Buffering -on-, Slow HDD off (using an NVME), FidelityFX -off-, God Rays -off-
Mods: None

Software: No Antivirus (other than Defender), tried disabling Steam overlay, tried disabling Discord overlay, tried running game without Discord running, no third party motherboard/driver/etc things (MSI Afterburner, Asus Armoury Crate, RGB Control software, etc), anything else in the taskbar is something that can't be closed for various reasons.

I'm hoping this is a driver issue and AMD is just taking their sweet time pushing it out... but if not I'm completely at a loss and either way I've grown so frustrated by this experience that I can't even enjoy the game anymore and am starting to actively resent it.

If there's anything I haven't tried or thought of.. I'm all ears at this point short of waiting who knows how many more weeks for AMD to push a driver update or Larian to release the 1.1 patch that hopefully addresses game crashing. Either way at this point I'm not holding my breath.

Same thing is happening to me, it was all working fine until the day of redeployment now I crash within 5–30 minutes it's extremely frustrating

It does sound like this would be specific to AMD's drivers. I, for example, am running on NVIDIA hardware and even after over 140 hours in-game, I haven't had a single crash -- I would imagine that if it was an issue with the game itself, I would likely have had at least a couple of crashes at this point. (Though, I am not saying it's an impossibility, either. Just seems unlikely.)

I've been ripping my hair out over this as well. I'd tried all of the things that were mentioned in every post that I could find and none of it worked. Some of the suggestions would improve stability, like limiting frame rates to 30, but I'm not sure if that was just placebo and it was just crashing exactly as randomly as before.

But what seems to have fixed it for me, was installing the latest Vulkan Runtime (I didn't even know there was one, I thought Vulkan was just installed along with the GPU Drivers like OpenGL).

https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home

Before installing the latest runtime, Vulkan would be choppy and feel a lot lower fps than the AMD Software was reporting. It would also crash at what felt like the same rate as DX11. But after installing the latest runtime, I've been able to play with silky smooth 60 fps for hours at a time.

For reference, I'm running an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming, 32Gb 3000mhz RAM, Radeon RX 7600.

I hope this helps.

I crash probably 2-3 times an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less. I've tried on both Vulkan and DX11, same story. I've had to redo story sequences numerous times and crashed in the middle of difficult fights, having to redo them again, it kinda forces me to save scum just in case i crash. DX11 was straight up unplayable in Act III after 45-60min.

Windows 11
I9-13900K
64GB of RAM
4080

All drivers up to date. It's been doing it from day one, normally I wouldn't deal with it and would just refund but, well, 130 hours and it's a little hard, but the game is so good. I deal with it but it's infuriating and like I have to roll to keep the game running (this is my sad attempt at a joke). You shouldn't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to avoid the game crashing, it should work, there are clearly some problems here and I don't think BIOS/gpu settings are at fault.

The game is just buggy, it gets worse as the game goes on and I crash a lot more in Act III than I do in earlier acts.

Wow that must be nice! I can't even get this damn POs to run I can't get it installed at all I've wiped my drive completely and it still won't install I keep getting an E9 error and if by some fluke I have had it installed maybe one or two times then it crashes on character creation this is the biggest buggiest POS game I have ever dealt with this is worse than a bgs game

Unfortunately I can confirm, at least on my end, that crashes continue with Vulkan after installing the latest version of the runtime after just starting and having some great rolls in a really big fight.

God lord. PredatedBrush basically summed it up.

I honestly cant understand why people and developers would even consider this game to be in anyway different to what is usually spat out on the market... I saw the same issues in Diablo 4 recently. Some people could play just fine, while many others couldnt.
I couldnt even register on this forum without getting a gateway error 504 three times after registering and having to refresh the page a couple of times before it would keep me logged in.

Cant play for 5 minutes without crashing to the desktop without any error message, getting set back to the beginning of playtime each time.
Randomly happening. Besides that , animations stagger, or are skipped, clipping through walls and characters, hitboxes not being recognized. This has been in EA since 6. of Oct. 2020!

All drivers are up-to-date, DX11 or Vulcan, no difference. This game is plain and simple unoptimized and rushed. Certainly not in any way what is being said on the media about Larian delivering a finished and complete title...

Using a Ryzen 7 1700, 2060 RTX with 6 GB of VRAM, 32GB DDR4 , MSI B350 Mate. Installed and reinstalled on two different SDDs. Tweaking settings over and over, no difference. No temp issues, no faulty ram after running diagnostics. New game , no avail.

Instead of going to continue falling for the same insanity that has befallen other games, forcing me to test and test and test over and over again, I stopped this evening wasting my time with this game and instead gathered my friends to the usual tabletop evening, using the new character sheets for a little playout while looking at the amazin art of the PDF Artbook and listening to the OST that came with the Digital Deluxe edition... because those are the only things that dont crash.

No wonder why Steam says only 2% finished Act I. Why is it so difficult to just buy a PC game and plug and play like it used to be.

Sorry to hear about your problems and I agree the situation is shoddy in the extreme. But . . . Most of what any of you have written is irrelevant to the problem - quoting specs and uninstalling and reinstalling isn't really useful info. What could be useful or at least more relevant info is: What patch you are on? Do you have the Steam or the GOG version? Have you sent in a report to Larian?

During EA I would get micro second freezes. Since launch I have had 0 problems. Sorry to hear your having them now.

I have a RTX 3070, and an ryzen 7 5800 cpu, with 32 gbs of ram.

I have tried everything in God's name and nothing has worked. I am starting to get fed up with the game. I have crashed so much since release and it's getting worse each patch. Hotfix 4 has made my crashing so bad, it's horrible. I am crashing every 10 to 60 minutes. I really hope the devs address this, I am tired of not seeing any response on the crash problems! This is really souring my taste for such a wonderful game, but I don't recommend it because of the crash issues. I seen people on discord, steam and here discuss it, yet nothing has been said about it from Larian.

Seriously wonder if they take their technical issues seriously.

That’s a damn shame to be having such issues when your PC specs are so good. Hopefully the first big patch manages to target why some people are getting frequent crashes. It doesn’t appear to be limited to one vendor of CPU or GPU judging by this thread.


Personally I’ve not experienced a single crash in 100 hours of play since release. I would be curious to see if anyone with the same specs as myself have any issues. As I only upgrade every second GPU cycle my specs are only as follows:

Windows 11
Ryzen 5800X
32 GB of DDR4 RAM
3080

I play using DX11 on full screen mode with the frames limited to 144 and the Larian launcher disabled through the steam options. Not that I think it’s relevant but I’ve got the graphic settings on ultra.

Hope there will be patches fast. Yesterday the game crashed 10 times in diffrent situations. Each time I must configure the options new (sound, gamma,...)