Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps crashing on PC and it’s literally unplayable? You’re certainly not the only one to experience this problem, but don’t worry, you can fix it quickly in a few steps.
Try these fixes:
Here are 7 fixes that helped many players solve the Baldur’s Gate 3 crashing issue. You don’t have to try them all. Simply work from the top down until you find the one that does the trick.
- Check the minimum requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3
- Switch to DirectX 11
- Close unnecessary background applications
- Run Baldur’s Gate 3 as an administrator
- Update your GPU driver
- Verify integrity of your game files
- Lower the video options
Fix 1 – Check the minimum requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3
Before moving on to the in-depth fixes below, let’s take a look at the system requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3. If your PC is underpowered to handle this game, crashing is no surprise, and the only solution is to upgrade your PC.
Minimum requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3
| Operating system | Windows 7 SP1 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel i5-4690 / AMD FX 4350 |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphics | Nvidia GTX 780 / AMD Radeon R9 280X |
| Storage | 150 GB available space |
Recommended requirements of Baldur’s Gate 3
| Operating system | Windows 10 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel i7 4770k / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X |
| Memory | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics | Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB / AMD RX580 |
| Storage | 150 GB available space |
If you have no idea about how to check your PC specs, simply follow the instruction here: How to find computer specs. If you’re done with this basic step and ensure your PC is well-equipped, then check out more fixes below.
Fix 2 – Switch to DirectX 11
There are two different programming interfaces available in Baldur’s Gate 3 – Vulkan and DirectX 11. The game runs on Vulkan by default, but if any serious incompatibility issues like crashing happen, you could switch to DirectX 11. Here’s how:
1) Launch Baldur’s Gate 3.
2) Click the gear icon next to Play, and select DirectX 11.
Launch the game to see if the crashing problem is fixed. If not, you can proceed to Fix 3.
Fix 3 – Close unnecessary background applications
Some programs you’re running in the background like Chrome or Discord may conflict with Baldur’s Gate 3 and cause the game to crash. Before you start a game, it’s a good idea to shut down other unneeded or resource-hogging applications.
1) Right-click the taskbar and click Task Manager.
2) Select other applications that consume your CPU, Memory and Network most, and click End Task.
Relaunch Baldur’s Gate 3 to test if the crashing is still there. If yes, try the next fix.
Fix 4 – Run Baldur’s Gate 3 as an administrator
Running Baldur’s Gate 3 in administrator mode ensures the game access necessary permission to run properly. This method sounds cliche, but it’s worth trying.
1) Navigate to the folder where you installed Baldur’s Gate 3 and find the bg3 executable file, which is likely to locate within steam\steamapps\common\Baldur’s Gate 3\bin.
2) Right-click the bg3.exe file and click Properties.
3) Select the Compatibility tab. Then, tick the box next to Run this program as an administrator and click OK.
If you also see the bg3_dx11.exe file, repeat the steps above to run this file as an administrator.
Does the crash still occur? If your answer is a sad yes, then go ahead with the next fix.
Fix 5 – Update your GPU driver
Graphics card (GPU) driver matters a lot to the gaming experience. If Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps crashing or showing a critical error or low performance, it’s possible that your GPU driver is faulty or out of date, and you should update it to fix the problem.
There are mainly two ways you can get the latest GPU driver for your computer: manually or automatically.
Option 1 – Download and install the GPU driver manually
GPU manufacturers keep updating drivers. To get them, you need to go to their websites (AMD, NVIDIA or Intel), find the drivers corresponding with your specific flavor of Windows version (for example, Windows 32 bit) and download the driver manually.
Once you’ve downloaded the correct drivers for your system, double-click on the downloaded file and follow the on-screen instructions to install the driver.
Option 2 – Automatically update the GPU driver
If you don’t have the time, patience or computer skills to update your video and monitor drivers manually, you can, instead, do it automatically with Driver Easy.
Driver Easy will automatically recognize your system and find the correct drivers for your exact graphics card, and your Windows version, and it will download and install them correctly:
1) Download and install Driver Easy.
2) Run Driver Easy and click the Scan Now button. Driver Easy will then scan your computer and detect any problem drivers.
3) Click the Update button next to the flagged GPU driver to automatically download the correct version of that driver, then you can manually install it (you can do this with the FREE version).
Or click Update All to automatically download and install the correct version of all the drivers that are missing or out of date on your system. (This requires the Pro version which comes with full support and a 30-day money back guarantee. You’ll be prompted to upgrade when you click Update All.)
If you need assistance, please contact Driver Easy’s support team at support@drivereasy.com.
You may be amazing at how the game performance improves with the updated graphics driver. But if, the driver update doesn’t cure the Baldur’s Gate 3 crashing, keep reading the fixes below.
Fix 6 – Verify integrity of your game files
Missing or corrupted game files are known to break your game. To see if that’s the case, you just need to make a few clicks to validate your game files.
1) Launch Steam.
2) Select the Library tab and right-click Baldur’s Gate 3 from the game list.
3) Click Properties.
4) Click Local Files and then click Verify Integrity of Game Files.
Wait for the process to finish, and the damaged game files will be automatically repaired. If Baldur’s Gate 3 crashing persists, there’s one more fix for you.
Fix 7 – Lower the video options
Some players reported that once they lower the video options of Baldur’s Gate 3, the crashes stop. To see whether this trick works for you, simply tweak the video settings until you find a combination that won’t trigger crashing anymore.
1) Launch Baldur’s Gate 3.
2) Click Options at the upper left corner.
3) Click Video.
4) According to your own situation, set the graphics options to Low or Medium and see how the game works.
You may not get the best visual experience but the game would run better and avoid crashes.
Since Baldur’s Gate 3 is still in Early Access, various kinds of issues will possibly appear. So if all the methods above don’t help, don’t frustrate and just wait patiently for the new patches from developers.
Hopefully you’ll find this post helpful. Feel free to share your comment below. Any questions or suggestions are highly appreciated. 😊
