Playing Doom: The Dark Ages with an NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU? Here's a bunch of bugs to be aware of

There are some nasty glitches with Blackwell graphics cards, notably with V-Sync and Multi Frame Generation, and Alt-Tabbing when launching the game.

Playing Doom: The Dark Ages with an NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU? Here's a bunch of bugs to be aware of
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TL;DR: Doom: The Dark Ages suffers from a number of bugs on PC, especially with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, including crashes when using G-Sync or V-Sync with Multi Frame Generation, and problems recording via Shadowplay. Avoid Alt-Tabbing while launching the game, too. Owners of Intel 13th and 14th-gen CPUs could experience some unpleasantness, too.

Doom: The Dark Ages is busily being played - at least by those who pre-ordered - and a fair number of known issues have already been aired, including some buggy behavior with NVIDIA's Blackwell graphics cards.

SK-HYJINX on X (hat tip to CapFrameX) picked up the known issues on PC which have been shared via the support document on Steam.

So, what do you need to be aware of if you're playing Doom: The Dark Ages with an RTX 5000 GPU?

First off, using G-Sync, or V-Sync alongside Multi Frame Generation, can cause Doom to crash. In the latter case, it's setting these options using the NVIDIA Control Panel which is the problem - so be sure to select them in-game and you should be okay. (Or just select one of them in the panel, not both).

Secondly, don't Alt-Tab while Doom is launching, as this can mess it up, leaving the game running in the background, but rendered inaccessible. In this case, to resolve the situation, you'll need to reboot your PC and launch Doom again.

A driver fix will be coming for both of those problems, we're told.

A further issue with any Blackwell GPU is that those recording gameplay via Shadowplay may hit crashes if they have Multi Frame Generation set to 3x or 4x. The advice is to avoid using either of those MFG settings, or don't use Shadowplay and record with something else.

Another issue to be aware of is that PCs with both RTX 5000 and RTX 4000 GPUs will still show V-Sync as enabled if you turn it off, if you are using Frame Generation (or Multi Frame Generation). The advice in this case is not to worry, Doom has disabled V-Sync, the bug is that it still shows as running - but rest assured, everything is fine.

Aside from NVIDIA GPUs, there's a couple of other bugs to be aware of. Don't run Doom: The Dark Ages with MSI Afterburner or RivaTuner overlays active, otherwise the game may become unstable.

There's also an eye-opening bug for those with 13th-gen or 14th-gen CPUs seemingly related to the instability issues around those chips (which Intel has patched).

In rare cases, we're advised, these processors can encounter persistent crashing, and the FAQ notes: "In such cases, you may have a corrupted CPU. Please contact intel Customer Support."

Yikes - presumably that problem would be showing up elsewhere, and not just in Doom: The Dark Ages? The worry with those instability issues is the damage the problem may have caused if the chip was used for some time with the elevated voltage glitch being active - sadly, the patches which were applied do nothing to turn back the clock on that. This issue is clearly labelled as rare, at least.