Elden Ring crashing and stuttering errors on PC: Possible fixes, reasons, and more

Elden Ring, despite being heralded as one of the best action role-playing and souls-like games in recent memory, and perhaps the most successful release in FromSoftware's history, isn't without its fair share of issues. The biggest complaint many players had with the game upon its release was the sub-par PC port and the constant barrage of technical issues.

While the title has received multiple patches and title updates addressing performance issues, its PC version still suffers from occasional stuttering and crashes. For a game that doesn't feature any manual save, crashes can often end up wiping hours of progress, which can be quite infuriating.

Fortunately, there are a few ways you can potentially fix the stuttering and crashing issues. All it requires is a bit of tinkering with the in-game settings, your GPU's driver settings, and patience.

Here's how you can potentially fix the stuttering and crashing issues in Elden Ring PC.

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Possible fixes for stuttering and crashing errors in Elden Ring PC

The biggest issue with the PC version of Elden Ring is the poor implementation of DirectX 12. This is the reason the game stutters every time a new alpha effect or gameplay mechanic is rendered by its engine. Although the stutters subside once the shaders for textures and effects have been rendered, it still is quite infuriating.

After a dozen or so updates, Elden Ring is in a much better state, but it still frequently faces the shader compilation stuttering issue, especially on lower-end CPUs.

The best way to remedy the stuttering issue is to get a good modern CPU, which will help with the shader compilation time. However, upgrading to a new CPU is not going to be an option for everyone.

Fortunately, there are a few more ways that you can potentially fix the stuttering issue in the game. The first involves lowering the graphics settings. The settings that have the most impact are Texture Quality, Shadow Quality, and Effects Quality.

You can check out our in-depth optimization guide for Elden Ring to get a better idea of which settings you should change to get the best performance on your PC. Given Shadow of the Erdtree features the same system requirements, these optimizations should also help get a stable performance in the upcoming DLC.

Effects Quality, in particular, is the one setting that can help fix the stuttering issue since lowering it reduces the quality of alpha particles, thereby decreasing the processing strain on the CPU.

As for the crashing issue, most of it is due to Elden Ring running out of video memory and switching to page file.

The best way to eliminate the crashing error is to reduce the Texture Quality setting, which, on 4GB or lower VRAM cards, should be put at Medium or Low, to reduce instances of the game running out of VRAM. Additionally, make sure you have at least 16GB of system memory to reduce the chances of the game shifting to page file.