The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — How to Fix "Out of Video Memory / DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED"
What causes the Out of Video Memory / DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED error in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and the fixes in the order that works.
Last updated 2026-09-25 · evergreen reference
The "Out of Video Memory / DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED" failure in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a specific cause, and knowing it saves you from working through a dozen unrelated fixes. This page covers what the error actually looks like, why it happens, and the fixes ranked by how often they work.
What the error looks like
Confirm you are dealing with the same failure.
Recognising "Out of Video Memory / DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED"
The game crashes with an out-of-video-memory message, a DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED error, or a D3D device hung error — most often in Novigrad, Toussaint, or during cutscenes.
Why it happens
The cause determines the fix.
Cause 1
Path tracing on an 8 GB card overflows VRAM. The driver resets the device before the game can recover, which is why the crash looks like a driver fault rather than a settings problem.
Cause 2
Genuine physical VRAM exhaustion during fast transitions or in dense areas, separate from the path tracing case.
Cause 3
On Intel 13th and 14th generation desktop CPUs, crashes during shader decompression are a CPU Vcore stability problem, not a graphics memory problem at all — this misleads a lot of troubleshooting.
Fixes, in the order that works
Cheapest and most reversible first.
Disable path tracing first
Turn off ray tracing entirely, including ray-traced global illumination, reflections, shadows and ambient occlusion. Then load the same save that crashed. If it stops, re-enable one ray-traced option at a time.
Drop textures from Ultra to High
This frees roughly 2 GB. Counter-intuitively it also looks sharper on an 8 GB card: when the VRAM buffer overflows, REDengine silently drops mip levels, so Ultra can render muddier textures than High.
Update your BIOS if you are on an Intel 13th/14th-gen CPU
Install the latest motherboard BIOS with Intel microcode 0x12F or later and apply Intel defaults. Oodle shader decompression crashes on these chips reflect voltage stability, not GPU memory — no graphics setting will fix them.
Set a system-managed page file on an NVMe SSD
Virtual memory absorbs the overflow. Put it on fast storage so the fallback does not turn into a stall.
Cap the frame rate
Set 60 FPS rather than leaving it uncapped. Uncapped frame rates raise GPU load, heat and power spikes, all of which precipitate driver resets during demanding scenes.
How to confirm it is fixed
One successful launch is not proof.
Retest properly
Repeat the exact save and area that crashed, then stay there for fifteen minutes. Also check Event Viewer for Display errors — if nvlddmkm keeps appearing, the VRAM budget is still over.
If none of this works
What to do after the list is exhausted.
Gather evidence before asking
Collect your crash log, a DxDiag and the list of fixes you already tried. For The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, support will ask for all three, and a report with evidence gets a far better response than "it crashes".
Reinstall last, not first
A reinstall is the most time-consuming fix and repairs the same files that verification and cache repair handle in minutes. Try it only after the targeted fixes above have failed.
Related pages
This is an independent player reference and is not official documentation for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. GameRulePro does not host or link to copyrighted assets. Modding guidance is for single-player use only — never use mods in online multiplayer. Verify current requirements, prices and policies with the publisher before acting.
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