Need for Speed Unbound "crash to desktop" error: How to fix, possible reasons, and more

Developed by Criterion Games, Need for Speed Unbound marks the NFS franchise's first exclusive release on current-generation consoles, i.e., PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, as well as PC.

While the game performs great on current-generation consoles, players on PC have been facing issues with its random crashes.

Many have been reporting crashing issues with the game ever since Need for Speed Unbound was available on early access for EA Play subscribers and pre-owners of the more expensive "Palace edition."

In some rare instances, the game crashes even before reaching the main menu, rendering the title virtually unplayable for many players.

While Criterion Games is yet to release a patch for the game, there are a few workarounds that players can try.

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Possible reasons and fixes for crashing errors in Need for Speed Unbound

Need for Speed Unbound is easily one of the most visually arresting games released this year. With a gorgeous art style that mixes photorealistic graphics and unique graffiti-like aesthetics, Need for Speed Unbound is not an easy game to run on underpowered PC hardware.

While the game's requirements aren't that high, with the minimum GPU requirements being a demi-decade old Nvidia GTX 1050ti and just eight gigabytes of RAM, it does require a relatively powerful mid-range CPU.

The game also has a shader cache-related issue which requires players to manually remove the cache file from the game's directory.

Thus, the possible reasons why the game might be crashing on certain PC configurations are:

• Not meeting the minimum system requirements
• Error while shader cache allocation
• Corrupted files caused by incomplete downloads

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Here are the steps that players can follow to potentially fix the crashing issue with Need for Speed Unbound:

Check the system requirements

One of the biggest reasons for games crashing on certain PC configurations is that they don't meet the minimum system requirements.

It could be the GPU having less VRAM than the minimum amount, the system memory being too low, or the CPU not being powerful enough to handle the game's asset rendering and processing load.

As a general rule of thumb, players should always check the official specified system requirements for any game before investing their hard-earned cash.

Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Need for Speed Unbound:

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit/ Windows 11 64-bit
• Processor: Ryzen 5 2600, Core i5-8600
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: RX 570, GTX 1050 Ti
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 50 GB available space

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit/ Windows 11 64-bit
• Processor: Ryzen 5 3600, Core i7-8700
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Radeon RX5700 (8GB), GeForce RTX 2070 (8GB)
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 50 GB available space

it is also recommended that players install the game on a SATA or NVMe SSD to ease up on the game's assets and texture streaming while boosting the general loading times.

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Verify integrity of game files

One of the best tools to diagnose and remedy crashing issues in PC games is Valve's PC client - Steam. While the client is basically a storefront and game library manager for most players, it is also an excellent tool to fix gameplay issues.

More often than not, with modern AAA games weighing in at over 100 gigabytes in size, there is a chance that some files might get corrupted during the lengthy download and installation process.

While Need for Speed Unbound doesn't accrue a gargantuan space, its 30-gigabyte file download is still susceptible to corruption.

This is where Steam's game file verification feature comes into play. The process essentially scans the selected game's directory for missing, corrupt or superfluous files and redownloads and fixes them, without forcing a redownload from scratch.

To verify the integrity of the game files for Need for Speed Unbound on Steam:

• Launch Steam > Click on Library.
• Right-click on Need for Speed Unbound from the list of games.
• Click on Properties > Go to Local Files.
• Click on Verify Integrity of Game Files.
• It will take some time while Steam checks for the missing components in the game's directory.
• Once done, launch the title.

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Delete the "PcDX12" file from game's directory

If all else fails, players can try to manually dig into the game's directory and delete a file known to cause conflicts with the startup on some PC configurations.

There are two files that players will need to delete to prevent the game's executable from terminating. One is inside the installation directory, while the other is within the save file folder in Documents.

Here is the path for both files:

• \Steamlibrary\steamapps\common\excalibur\shadercache\
• \Documents\Need For Speed(TM) Unbound\cache\

The file is titled "PcDX12" and is around 200 megabytes. The solution isn't permanent as these files are recreated upon launching the game. Thus, players will need to delete these files every time they want to play the game.

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Apart from these crashing errors, Need for Speed Unbound is a fairly polished arcade racing experience with little to no bugs or visual glitches. Given that the game is still missing a big post-launch update, it is likely that Criterion Games will eventually end up fixing most of the issues.

Need for Speed Unbound is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC.