[2022] KNOWN ISSUE: Crashing at Random, Due to GPU-Related Errors

We are looking in to this, and are working actively with our hardware partners to identify and solve the underlying issues.

However, it’s worth keeping in mind some of these crashes may be the result of localised driver-related issues and the like.

More information in the articles linked below. Please be aware this may reduce the rate at which you experience GPU-related crashes, but may not eliminate them at this time - please remember, we are looking in to it!:

[PC] How to Resolve GPU Crashes in Darktide

[PC] How to Resolve Crashes in Darktide

Existing reports (once we have confirmed the crash being reported is the result of a GPU-related error) may be merged here, to help us keep track of the issues being reported.

I messed up! Links are now sorted

Initially looks like a GPU driver issue. Please reinstall the latest Nvidia drivers, but use the “Clean Install” option. Note you must sleect the “Custom install” option first, then at one point it will ask you if you wish to do a clean install fo the previous drivers. If you use the “express install” option, the clean install option doesnt appear

It looks like youre running driver version 512.95

Can you try upgrading to the latest Nvidia drivers which are 526.98

Thanks

Can you provide any console log files for games where you crashed? You can find those files by referencing the sticky

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/how-to-provide-a-crash-report-console-log-or-user-settings-config/55163/3

Who has been able to solve this by changing or lowering their ‘Video’ options OR lowering their ‘Worker Thread’ count within the launcher’s ‘Settings’ menu?

Just attempting to collect some more information for our developers. Could you let us know using the poll below if any of these options have helped in reducing or resolving your crashes?

• Capping FPS
• Lowering ‘Worker Thread’ Count
• Disabling DLSS
• Lowering Overall Video Quality
• Changing Window Mode
• NOPE

0 voters

IMPORTANT! We have released an experimental branch in Steam, which includes:

• POTENTIAL Backend Error FIX. We understand this hasn’t worked for everybody, and are continuing to investigate
• Additional logging for internal_error (Error Code: 2007)
• Additional logging for nonexisting_channel (Error Code: 2001)
• Additional logging for various GPU-related crashes, AND A POTENTIAL FIX!

Please note that the additional logging supports our investigation and will not necessarily solve the underlying issue for you at this time. We encourage anybody with these issues to use this branch, so we can continue work on addressing these issues as quickly as possible.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A 1.8GB download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

Thank you! Keen to hear back

Please include the crash report! Thank you

SECOND POTENTIAL FIX NOW LIVE on the experimental branch for players impacted by GPU-related crashes.

Already have the experimental branch selected? You might need to restart the Steam client for the download to initiate.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A +43.4MB download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/how-to-provide-a-crash-report-console-log-or-darktide-launcher-log/55163/3

Please provide your darktide launcher logs as well as your console logs. Thanks

THIRD POTENTIAL FIX NOW LIVE on the experimental branch for players impacted by GPU-related crashes.

Already have the experimental branch selected? You might need to restart the Steam client for the download to initiate.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A +44MB download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/how-to-provide-a-crash-report-console-log-or-darktide-launcher-log/55163/3

Can you provide your console log and your darktide launcher log

FOURTH POTENTIAL FIX NOW LIVE on the experimental branch for players impacted by GPU-related crashes.

Already have the experimental branch selected? You might need to restart the Steam client for the download to initiate.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A +42.7MB download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

Just doing as instructed. You can be mad at me but remember I am merely the communicator.

@Auleyhill & @YumikoYuuki one of our Engine Developers is asking if you could try with RayTracing disabled please?

That’s weird. I’ve let him know

We’re working on a new build, unsure if it’s likely to be put on to experimental tonight. I’ll keep you posted…

I’m 30+ minutes late in announcing this, but…:

FIFTH POTENTIAL FIX NOW LIVE on the experimental branch for players impacted by GPU-related crashes.

Already have the experimental branch selected? You might need to restart the Steam client for the download to initiate.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A +52.3MB download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

FOLLOW-UP FROM:

Promising improvements have been made in this area but we understand some issues may remain.

We will be monitoring our crash data closely and looking at where else we need to address.

However, it’s worth keeping in mind some of these crashes may be the result of localised driver-related issues and the like.

More information in the articles linked below. Please be aware this may reduce the rate at which you experience GPU-related crashes, but may not eliminate them at this time. Please remember, we are looking in to it!:

[PC] How to Resolve GPU Crashes in Darktide

[PC] How to Resolve Crashes in Darktide

Existing reports (once we have confirmed the crash being reported is the result of a GPU-related error) may be merged here, to help us keep track of the issues being reported.

Thanks @kensei1318, you’re running into GPU hangs each time.

We’re working with our hardware partners to resolve these as a top priority at the moment.

I’ll merge this post with our pinned GPU crash topic so the information is in the best place.

Apologies for the inconvenience whilst we iron these crashes out.

Potential workaround. Could anybody try this and let me know if they have any success with this method?:

1. Press the Windows key + R
2. Enter %appdata% within the search input and select ‘OK’
3. Navigate to AppData\Roaming\Fatshark\Darktide
4. Open the user_settings.config
5. Scroll down to launcher_overrides
6. Enter the line threaded_streamer = false within the brackets {} as seen below
7. Save your changes
8. Launch Darktide as normal and observe

You should have this in your user_settings.config already, providing you’ve booted up Darktide since the patch (as it was newly introduced with the patch). So if you haven’t launched Darktide post-patch, you won’t see it yet:

launcher_overrides = { }

Then you go ahead and add in threaded_streamer = false within those brackets

Good to know! Thank you, I’ll let our Engine Developer know.

@Fasel Could you try exiting, and re-launching Steam?

Thanks to anybody else who has tried this. Sorry to see you’ve had no luck.

Hi!

I saw that some of you had a bunch of

21:03:17.763 [d3d12 pipeline state] creating pipeline state for #ID[50ed6411]
21:03:17.763 [d3d12 pipeline state] creating pipeline state for #ID[50ed6411]
21:03:17.853 [d3d12 pipeline state] creating pipeline state for #ID[df4fd238]
21:03:17.853 [d3d12 pipeline state] creating pipeline state for #ID[df4fd238]

in the log file right before the crash.

I’m curious if it will help to reset the shader cache.
To do that, simply delete the two .pso_lib files, and the .hans file in the same directy where user_settings.config is. I’m not saying it will help, but we need to try anything now.

That is correct. The files will be re-generated next time you launch the game. And if they for some reason contain anything broken that will be removed.

I don’t really want to send people down some rabbithole in vain, but one thing I’ve noticed from going through all your log files is that you all seem to be running the same version of Windows11.

Have you tried to fully reinstall the drivers using DDU? (Display Driver Uninstaller Download version 18.0.5.8) (Do not attempt unless you know what you are doing! And read very carefully how it is supposed to be used!)
First run DDU to completely rid the system of every remnant of a driver, and then install the driver again from nvidia. This seem to be reported to be able to help with issues in Windows11 generally.

Another option could be to try to use the stable (studio) drivers instead of the gaming performance drivers, and see if that helps.

Meanwhile we’ll be working hard on trying to solve these issues once and for all.

Rejects! If you suffer from prominent GPU hangs, you can now opt in to try the experimental build, where it may work better for you.

Please report back

Right click the Application in steam and select “Properties”, proceed to the BETAS tab and enter this password in the text-box:

cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

This should unlock the “experimental” build.

Hi.

GPU hangs are among our key priorities right now, and we work on a solution to them around the clock. While they are becoming less and less common, and we know our efforts so far have worked, we understand we are not yet where we want to be: eradicating the issue entirely so that all of our players get to enjoy the game without interruptions.

What we have seen from our crash-data is that they are more common on Win11, and more common on high-end GPUs (30 series). They do occur across the board as well, but in a much much less frequency.
Most repeat-crashers seem to have the previous in common, but there are exceptions.

The experimental build is where we do rapid updates when we find something that could possibly be the source of the problem.

PC development is very tricky as there are so many different configurations, drivers, hardware, software, and a plethora of other influencing factors. Rest assured the work on eradicating GPU hangs won’t stop until we have succeeded.

I believe the graphic hasn’t updated due to a caching issue with Steam. I believe if you clear your Steam cache this should update. The crash appears to be a GPU-related crash - which are the most common crashes players are encountering, which we’re working with our hardware partners to resolve.

Will merge this post with our Known Issued thread.

@DelphanGruss, it’s definitely a caching issue, as we have updated these images.

That said, my initial suggestion of clearing the Steam cache may not work as it’s only posssible to clear the download cache. It may be worth a shot still though!

Otherwise, does restarting Steam or your PC make any difference?

Could you provide us with your crash reports, if possible?

Crash Report

1. After the crash has occurred, a pop-up window prompting you to enter the details of what you were doing prior to the crash will be displayed
2. Submit the pop-up window
3. Another pop-up window similar to the previous one will be displayed
4. Click the ‘Copy to clipboard’ button
5. Paste it here

Yes! There are promising improvements in this area with our next patch.

Please keep us posted on how it performs for you once the patch is live.

Hoping to patch before the end of the week.

I think it was announced that a Community Update was due today - I can see how that would be interpreted as a patch.

Edit: Please correct me if I’m wrong!

Yep, thank you!

All of these crash reports show GPU hang crashes. I’ll merge this with the Known Issue topic.

There is a new experimental build live which may solve some of the GPU hangs.
Please try it if you suffer from regular hangs.
Beta password: cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

Hello all. I’m here mostly to say that yes, we are still working on this.

To that end, there is now a new experimental build live that may help with hangs. Please try it if you exerience frequent hangs. Beta password: cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

It’s just a small (~40Mb) Binary patch, so it’s quick to toggle back and forth. And it plays against the same backend and the normal version.
I don’t want to advertise this prematurely to a bigger audience unless it actually helps.

The reality of this issue is that we really don’t know why this is happening for so many people, while not happening for yet so many others. And not being able to reproduce it myself doesn’t help at all.
But now I found something that could possibly be at least one cause, and this thred is a good place to start verifying it.

cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

Hi.

I have another thing you are welcome to try, and get back to me with wether it does any difference or not. It is to disable the mesh streamer, this will cause the game to require much more VRAM than usual, so if you have low VRAM (6Gb or so) this might not work for you.

Anyway, to disable the mesh streamer, browse to the games steam files.
Locate the file settings_common.ini in the folder bundle\application_settings
In that file, locate the section that says: mesh_streamer_settings = { … }
and change the “disable = false” to “disable = true” and save the file.

while you’re at it, or rather, if the mesh streamer hack doesn’t do anything for you, you can also try to disable the multi threaded texture streamer by changing the value
threaded_streamer = true to threaded_streamer = false in the section called feedback_streamer_settings = { … }

Disabling the threaded texture streamer will most likely degrade your performance slightly. Just so you are aware. But I am interested in seeing if any of these actions helps for you who experience these crashes all the time.

Please don’t. Everytime this prompt goes up, an automatic crash report is sent to our systems along with all logs and dumps. This helps us keep track of what crashes are most critical to prioritise. If a large enough player base does this, our systems will say that everything looks good.

On that note, it’s entirely useless to post dumps and logs here, we already get all that informtaion in our system. All you need to post, if you want special assistance with a specific problem (that isn’t a GPU hang) is the GUID presented by the crash-promt. With this GUID we can look up this particular crash and get all the information available from it.

Also, GPU hangs in particular are an issue which occurs on the GPU, so crash dumps means absolutely nothing in that case unfortunately. This is also why GPU hangs are so notoriously hard to find the reason for. As there just isn’t any sort of information attached with it.

I probably should elaborate. This is why we try to not say too much, as it’s always being misinterpreted to a degree. It’s not useless to post logs and dumps for most issues. It’s useless for GPU hangs in particular, for us developers.

Our community managers are not developers, but they know how to categorize crashes based on quickly looking at the logs, so to them it’s not useless in terms of giving accurate response and referring to possible known workarounds.

Another aspect of posting logs and dumps it that the community managers can easily refer to a specific case by just linking the forum post when communicating with us.

But yes, all crashes are automatically submitted and stored in our system so it’s not strictly necessary to post it here. But it’s also much quicker to just click on a log link here and have a look rather than looking up the crash in the crash database.

That said, posting 10-20 crash dumps here in a post doesn’t do much else than causing noise in the thread.

New experimental update is available. Fingers crossed.

Password: cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

We have released a new update on the experimental branch in Steam which contains new logging to support our investigation. To crash whilst using this branch would actually be very helpful for us!

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

The current experimental have no portraits. It’s part of the experiment. I should have probably mentioned this. But this is the nature of the experimental build. I experiment and see what works. Since this GPU hang can’t be reliably reproduced in a controlled environment I need to go wide and block out parts of the engine which we suspect. Currently it has lead us to the portrait rendering system and I want to verify that it helps by disabling this system completely. Currently only one part of it is disabled, which is why I still can see some hangs comming in. But I’m planning on disabling the other part as well and see if that does it. Then we know where to dig in and figure out what is going wrong.

New build deployed where only portraits are disabled. Weapons and cosmetics should be back on this one.

We have released a new update on the experimental branch in Steam with potential stability improvements for those experiencing GPU-related crashes.

Please be aware that PLAYER PORTRAITS are disabled in this build, and will appear blank.

PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FULLY! THANK YOU.

1. Open the Steam client
2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
3. Select ‘Properties’
4. Select ‘Betas’
5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
6. Select ‘Check Code’
7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
9. Close the pop-up window
10. A download should now start
11. Play!
12. Post here to let us know the outcome

On it

experimental should be back and working with the latest content patch. I missed one commit when cleaning out on the experimental branch. I was hard-capping worker threads to 10 in the engine, this is no longer the case. But you can emulate this behaviour using the launcher if needed.

So, I think it’s hard to explain exactly why this is the way it is, and that’s partly because the cold truth is that we don’t know yet. What we do know is that it’s something that has to do with our instancing and instanced skinning system. (Instancing being drawing multiple copies of the same mesh at different places faster than it would be drawing them one by one, Skinning being transforming vertices of a mesh to a set of of ‘bones’ to make the mesh move around, end of graphics programming crash course )

We also know that whatever is causing the issue must be a product of some pesky “race condition”, which means that occasionally when you are processing stuff on many threads and processors at the same time, things can come out of expected order. It’s like finding a neele in a haystack, it’s probably something super-dumb, its almost always is once you finally solve a bug. But the nature of it is that it’s always on a move, the slighest change in timing between threads and the gpu can make it just work as it’s supposed to, or crash and burn horribly.
For people with slower CPUs and slower GPUs, it seems to be much less likely that whatever goes wrong goes wrong. For people with faster CPUs, with more cores and especially faster GPUs (30xx series+) It’s much more likely that whatever goes wrong goes wrong. This is also why lowering worker threads, capping frame rates seems to help.

To that end, the reason there have not been any stability fixes in the main release yet is because we haven’t found the culprit yet. The disabling of the portraits is a measure that seems to reduce the likelyhood of the issue to occur, but it’s not the issue itself. It still happens, just in a lesser frequency than before, and it also entirely depends on the hardware and the current mood of the PC, since it’s so highly dependent on time. This is also why each patch can seem to “move” the crash around, patches may fix it for some, and make it worse for others. Unfortunately.

We have managed to create an artifical repocase where we almost reliably can casue a hang to happen, and this is the first time since launch that we have been able to do that, if this is THE hang we’re not sure, but it is A hang. The people who can work on this issue are working 100% on solving it every day. The rest of the team are not equipped to work on this, so they will naturally continue to work on other aspects of the game, and that is why we release patches without fixing this issue. The things that are easily fixed are getting fixed while we continue to work on this beast.

This is indicative that an underlying issue is at play - check out your Windows Event Viewer for any errors.

New experimental deployed. Please update and try.

Yes. I did a small update to the experimental yesterday. I will do another today.

New experimental deployed, restart Steam to get it. Portraits disabled as that seems to have helped a lot before, plus a new experiment.

A new build has been deployed. This build will require more VRAM the longer you are playing. So if you experience crashes do to Out of memory consider lowering texture quality or resolution.

Have you tried the experimental branch? Beta password: cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV

Sorry to hear that Moto. But if it’s not too much to ask, please try this current experimental as well. You are one of the unlucky ones who seem to crash all the time, it would be valuable if you could try and se if you still crash on this build. (experimental). It looks like you’ve only played on the main branch according to the one crash that is reported to our system from your steam user name.

With 1800 replies here, I’ve decided to create a new pinned post dedicated to this issue.

We hope this will also increase visibility of the experimental branch for players that are encountering these crashes.

Please continue the discussion here: