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Elden Ring PC Issues, Glitches, Bugs, Problems, and More Explained


Elden Ring promo
Credit: FromSoftware

Elden Ring is finally here, after so many years. Gamers across the world are finally playing FromSoftware's open-world masterpiece. Elden Ring has come to a number of last-generation and next-generation platforms as well as to PC. Unfortunately, FromSoftware isn't known for its PC ports. In this article, we'll tell you everything you need to know about Elden Ring on PC.

Elden Ring and Ultrawide Support

Elden Ring promo
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Credit: FromSoftware

In 2022, it's standard practice for video games on PC to come with a variety of features and support a ton of different resolutions. In the larger gaming market, only a couple percent of gamers actually use aspect ratios outside of the default 16:9, but many gamers do this.

Accordingly, over the course of the last decade, more and more games support ultrawide resolutions like 2560x1080 or 3440x1440. Nowadays, it's common for you to boot up any new release and just play on an ultrawide monitor on PC, no problem.

Related: Will Elden Ring Have Mods or Official Mod Support?

Unfortunately, FromSoftware is terrible at ultrawide support. Their games usually don't come with ultrawide support, and it's usually a feature that modders have to work overtime to patch into the game unofficially. Even then, it's kind of hit or miss.

Ultrawide on some FromGames on PC isn't the best, and depending on your personal setup, your individual mileage may vary. With a little elbow grease, FromGames can run in ultrawide, but they usually don't work out of the box that way, unlike most other AAA games today on PC.

In Elden Ring, it's the same situation. Though it's 2022, Elden Ring has absolutely no ultrawide support. You simply can't play the game that way on release, and if you've got an ultrawide panel, you'll have to deal with black bars.

Related: Can You Play Elden Ring on Steam Deck?

However, expect in the coming days, weeks, and months for modders to add in ultrawide support eventually. Just don't expect it to work flawlessly without a little tweaking.

Elden Ring and FPS Caps

Elden Ring promo
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Credit: FromSoftware

FromSoftware is not a PC-first developer. In fact, their first PC game, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition was so infamously unacceptably bad that is totally unplayable at all on PC without mods to bring core functionality to the game, like the ability to play at 60 FPS instead of being hard-locked to 30 FPS. On PC.

However, for over a decade, FromSoftware's engine has not been capable of framerates over 60 FPS. The engine has been hard-locked to 60 FPS for a long, long time. With FromSoftware's last release, Sekiro, modders finally found a way to unlock framerates, but it's fairly glitchy and works better as a proof-of-concept.

Elden Ring has the same 60 FPS hard-cap on all platforms, whether it's on PC or anywhere else. Considering the popularity of Elden Ring, mods are an inevitability. And considering the work done on Sekiro, it's possible, and maybe even likely, we'll see modders try to unlock the game's framerate.

Related: Is Elden Ring Coming to Nintendo Switch?

But it's not a sure thing this kind of mod will even ever exist, and if it does, there's no guarantee it'll work well. Plus, that's not even to talk about the kind of hardware you'd need to run the game at, say, 120 FPS.

Elden Ring and DLSS

Elden Ring promo
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Credit: FromSoftware

Another staple of modern PC games is DLSS support. NVIDIA's AI-driven upscaling technology across the board gives gamers massive increases to performance without much, or any, sacrifices to visual quality. It's essentially free performance, and free performance would be a big help in a taxing game like Elden Ring.

Unfortunately, Elden Ring launched without any DLSS support whatsoever. If you were hoping DLSS would get you to a stable 60 FPS, think again. However, all hope isn't lost. DLSS really is a staple of modern video games, and it comes to games big and small.

Related: Elden Ring - Everything You Need to Know

It's very likely Elden Ring will see DLSS support added eventually in an update. Though, as discussed, FromSoftware isn't great with PC ports, so it's also possible, like other infamous PC ports such as Nier Automata, Elden Ring will never get the features it so desperately needs.

All we can do is wait and see, but the chances for DLSS support are good.

Elden Ring and Stuttering

Elden Ring promo
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Credit: FromSoftware

Try as you may to optimize your setup and get the best possible performance out of Elden Ring, no matter what resolution you play at or platform you're on, you're going to experience stutters and hitching.

A core feature of FromSoftware's engine is its data streaming ability. The way the game loads assets in and out as you move across the game's world. In all FromSoftware games, there has been the regular hitch or stutter as you cross a threshold into a new area and the game has to load a bunch of stuff in.

Related: Why Elden Ring Is Actually Dark Souls 4

Elden Ring is a totally open-world game completely unlike the linear levels of Souls games, so streaming in data happens constantly. Accordingly, the game can get stuttery or hitch fairly regularly as you move about the world. It's not a big deal, nowhere near game-breaking, but it's noticeable and something you will have to accept.

It's unlikely this quirk of FromSoftware's engine is suddenly patched out, but further updates to the game will likely smooth out performance more than it is right now at launch. Things will likely get better, but a completely flawless, perfectly smooth playthrough of Elden Ring probably won't be possible anytime soon.

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