WARDOGS crashes mid-match: fixing GPU crashes, stutter and memory issues

Crashes in the middle of a match are, alongside launch errors, the most common topic in the WARDOGS Steam forum. Typical patterns: an “Unexpected Error” after shader compilation, a crash after 40 to 50 minutes of play, a full PC reboot while loading, or stutters at fixed intervals as soon as you move the mouse or shoot. With the Season 1 changelog from 9 September and Patch 0.11 from 14 September, Bulkhead fixed several crash paths in the frame generation pipeline and further GPU crashes. If your problem persists, the following steps help. Status: 19 September 2026.

First: what the patches have already changed

According to the changelog, DLSS Frame Generation can now be turned off without a restart, the render target pool is configurable, shadow cache refreshes were reduced and GPU crash reports carry more detail. Startup reports failures earlier and more clearly. So first check that Steam has installed the current update before applying older workarounds.

Crash after about 40 minutes: disable upscaling in the config file

A player with a GeForce GTX 1080 traced a reproducible crash after 40 to 50 minutes to forced upscaling settings and shared the fix in the forum:

• Close the game and open the folder %localappdata%\Wardogs\Saved\Config\WindowsClient.
• Open GameUserSettings.ini in a text editor.
• Set NvidiaDLSSMode and FSR3QualityMode to 0 and save.

The game then uses TAA instead of DLSS or FSR. For him a full round was stable afterwards. A player with an RTX 5090 reports that the fix changed nothing for him, so the cause is not the same for everyone. If you use Frame Generation, also switch it off in the graphics options, since the developers explicitly repaired crash paths there.

Crash or freeze during shader compilation

The most frequently described launch crash shows an “Unexpected Error” with code 0xC0000005 (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION), usually right after the shader bar. Proven order:

• Turn off Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (HAGS): Settings, System, Display, Graphics, Advanced graphics settings.
• Clear the shader caches: Disk Cleanup on the Windows drive with “DirectX Shader Cache”; for NVIDIA additionally delete the DXCache and GLCache folders under %localappdata%\NVIDIA. On the next launch the game rebuilds the shaders, which takes a few minutes.
• Do not alt-tab, click or kill the game during compilation. On an NVMe SSD the process finished after about six minutes for one player.
• Close overlays and background tools: Discord, Steam overlay, NVIDIA App, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner, OBS and RGB software.
• Verify game files in Steam.

PC reboots or Windows freezes completely

If not just the game but the whole machine goes down, the cause is almost always outside WARDOGS. Team17 explicitly names overclocking in its pinned thread and recommends a 60 FPS cap as a test. Specifically:

• Reset CPU and GPU overclocks in the driver and BIOS; switch off XMP/EXPO/DOCP for the RAM as a test.
• Cleanly remove the graphics driver with DDU and install the current version directly from NVIDIA or AMD. Owners of older GeForce 10-series cards report better stability with driver 537.58.
• Update chipset, PSU and motherboard tools; install Windows updates.
• Check Event Viewer: a “Kernel-Power 41” without a preceding error points to the power supply or overclocking, not the game.

Video memory and RAM

Reports of “Out of video memory” after 10 to 15 minutes come mainly from cards with 8 GB of VRAM or less. What helps:

• Match texture quality and texture streaming to your video memory, set reflections and shadows to Medium, lower Global Illumination by one step. According to player reports the latter often gains more FPS than a lower texture setting.
• Close browsers with many tabs, Discord hardware acceleration and recording software; they occupy VRAM.
• Do not disable the page file. One forum thread recommends large manual values; feedback is mixed. If you adjust it, set initial and maximum size to the same value so Windows does not keep recreating the file.
• Minimum requirements according to Team17: Windows 10 64-bit, i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3500, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1660 or RX 590.

Stutter despite high FPS

A player with an RTX 3070, Ryzen 7 5700X and 16 GB RAM describes freezes of up to two seconds with every mouse movement, regardless of graphics settings. There is no confirmed solution, but this is the order that had the most success:

• Full PC restart before playing, not just waking from sleep.
• Clear the shader cache and let the shaders compile completely once.
• Change driver version: some users see the stutter only with the latest NVIDIA driver and roll back to 596.49.
• Disable fullscreen optimisations for the WARDOGS executable and switch between fullscreen and borderless in the game.
• Keep at least 10 to 15 percent free space on the SSD.
• For stutter at fixed intervals: disconnect peripheral software such as mouse macros and controller tools that constantly send input.

Our approach in short

• Wait for the current update, then turn Frame Generation off.
• For crashes after 40 minutes: NvidiaDLSSMode and FSR3QualityMode to 0 in GameUserSettings.ini.
• For shader crashes: HAGS off, clear caches, close overlays, verify files.
• For reboots: overclocking and XMP off, clean driver install, test a 60 FPS cap.
• For VRAM errors: lower textures, streaming and GI, close background programs.
• Then send DxDiag to support, plus the Crashes folder under %localappdata%\Wardogs\Saved if it exists.