Warhammer 40K Darktide: Fix Stuttering & Freezing

Darktide Stuttering & Freezing Fix: Warhammer 40K Darktide is finally available on Steam and Game Pass. The new hack-and-slash game comes from the developers behind the Vermintide series. The game borrows a lot from the Left 4 dead, but in a better way, on top of that, it’s a looter shooter, and this is what most of us need.

Stuttering is one of the most annoying things when it comes to gaming. You are busy taking down enemies, and suddenly, there will be a micro stutter or freeze that will keep happening from time to time.

Problems and AAA titles are a match made in heaven. Almost every AAA title released this year had some issue, let it be random errors, crashing, or the game not even launching for some. This is really annoying and can make everyone frustrated.

Read: How To Fix Crashing in Darktide 40k

Enough about the problem; let’s find out what the solution is:

How To Fix Stuttering and Freezing in Darktide

Reasons?

Here are a few reasons why Darktide could be stuttering on your PC:

Insufficient Resources: One of the most common causes of stutter in games is having inadequate resources for the game. This includes having an underpowered CPU, GPU, or RAM.

Poorly Optimized Games: Poorly optimized games, or games that haven’t been updated in a while, can cause stuttering and poor performance. This is applicable in the case of Darktide.

Running too many apps in the background: Running too many programs on your computer can cause your game to stutter.

Overheating of CPU or GPU: Overheating can be caused by inadequate airflow and a component becoming too hot due to excessive use. This can cause stuttering or, worse, crashes.

These are a few reasons for stuttering in almost every game. Now let’s fix this.

Increase Worker Threads

In gaming, worker threads perform background tasks while the main thread (the thread running the game) continues to execute primary operations. Darktide implements this; the default setting is always one number below the highest number of available threads.

During the beta, I had constant stuttering, even on a high-end PC, and I couldn’t figure out a fix for this. But then my game suddenly crashed, and I realized that the game has a launcher with settings. Long story short, you need to set the worker thread count to 1 or 2.

To do this:

• Launch the game from Steam or Xbox Game Pass.
• The Darktide launcher will open up.
• Click on the settings button below the big “Play” button.
• Locate “Worker threads” and set it to “1” or “2”.

This instantly fixed my stuttering problem; I haven’t faced a problem since then.

If your problem isn’t fixed using this tweak, please continue reading. I have a few more tricks.

Update Graphic Drivers

Updating graphics drivers is one of the most critical steps to reduce games’ stuttering. It is recommended that you update your graphics drivers to the latest version as soon as a new version becomes available, as this will ensure that you have the most up-to-date drivers for optimal game performance.

Nvidia has already pushed the Game Ready Driver for Darktide called 526.98.

If you still face issues after updating drivers, a clean install using DDU can also help. Many users on Steam and Reddit have reported that downgrading GPU drivers have helped them fix crashes.

Move the game to SSD or faster HDD

A Reddit user reported constant stuttering in Darktide; someone asked him for his specs, and it turns out the guy had an SSD for C Drive, but the game was installed on the 5400 RPM drive. The user moved his game to the SSD, and the issue was fixed.

As technology continues to evolve, so does the need for better storage. Although hard drives have been around for a while, they are quickly replaced by solid-state drives due to their increased speed and decreased energy consumption. SSDs are more expensive than hard disks but offer many more benefits. On top of the increased speed, they also consume less power. This is a critical reason SSDs are used in many new devices, from smartphones to computers.

Use Custom Control Panel Settings

For Nvidia Users:

• Open up Nvidia’s Control Panel. Right-click on desktop > click Nvidia control panel
• Click Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings
• Find “Darktide” you can manually add the game if it’s not on the list
• Now, make the following changes:

Monitor Tech: G-Sync (If available)
Maximum Pre-rendered frames: 2
Threaded optimization: On
Power Management: Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering – Quality:  Performance
Low Lateny Mode: Ultra (High or Ultra makes sense only for PvP Games)*

Nvidia Low Latency Mode is a feature found in Nvidia’s Control Panel. It is designed to help reduce input latency on Nvidia graphics card systems. Low Latency Mode can be used in games or any other application where you need to reduce the amount of time it takes for your inputs to be registered.

For AMD Users

• Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use Application settings
• Anti-aliasing Method: Multisampling
• Morphological Filtering: Off
• Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
• Texture Filtering Quality: Performance
• Surface Format Optimization: On
• Wait for V-sync: Off
• OpenGL Triple Buffering: Off
• Shader Cache: AMD optimized
• Tesselation Mode: Override application settings
• Maximum Tesselation Level: Off
• GPU Workload: Graphics
• Chill: Off
• Frame Rate Target Control: Disabled

Close any memory-hogging applications

Open up the task manager and check your memory and disk usage. Close all applications (non-windows) that are eating your memory and using a disk drive. If you are still stuttering with everything looking fine, you should probably wait for the hotfix update, which should be pushed out shortly.

Several memory-hungry apps can cause high RAM usage in Windows. One of the most notorious offenders is Chrome. Even when minimized, Chrome can take up a lot of system resources. Firefox and Opera also tend to use more RAM than Edge. If you’re experiencing regular crashes or slowdowns, it might be time to check your app’s resource usage and see if any of your favorites are guilty parties.

Turn off Conflicting Applications

This is a Reddit recommendation; users have reported that software such as iCUE, Razer Cortex, Razer Synapse, and Armory Crate is leading to problems in Darktide.

These applications are unimportant to me, so I have uninstalled them. I’ve also heard that users running iCUE were handed out bans for no reason. However, you can never be sure about cheaters; they are known for making things up.

Use Process Lasso to limit CPU usage.

Process Lasso is software that helps you limit the CPU usage of a particular app. Download the software and use it accordingly. I dropped my CPU usage by almost 20% after using the software. Also, try switching between hyperthreading on/off; this also dramatically improves.

Use My Performance Guide

I have written a comprehensive guide on Best Settings for Darktide 40K and Fixing Lag in Darktide. Check out both guides and tweaks; this will help you fix your problems in no time.

These were a few tweaks and fixes that can help you fix the stuttering and freezing issue in Darktide. Changing the worker thread count value is the one that worked for me.

Use the comment section below and let me know what worked for you!