The First Descendant is out of video memory? How to prevent it from crashing

Are you having problems with The crash of the first descendant? Then you’re not alone. Several players are reporting crashes, and The First Descendant tells them that their system is running out of video memory, despite having a powerful GPU that isn’t short on VRAM. This issue appears when the game compiles shaders, and it’s an issue we’ve encountered before. Rather than being an issue with your GPU, it’s much more likely to be due to the fact that you’re using an Intel processor.

Released on July 2, The First Descendant is based on Unreal Engine 5, an engine that has proven particularly problematic on some of Intel’s top gaming processors, including the Core i9 14900K. Game crashes on Intel processors have been reported for a number of games based on this engine, often with similar errors related to running out of video memory when compiling shaders.

Indeed, even Nvidia is blaming Intel for the issue and directing players to the company’s technical support. Unfortunately, Intel also recently admitted that it has yet to find the cause of the problem, but there are several steps you can take to reduce your system’s instability in The First Descendant and other Unreal Engine-based games.

The first step is to update your motherboard to the latest BIOS (firmware), which you can get from your motherboard manufacturer’s website. If you’ve never done this before, check out our full guide on how to flash your BIOS . Motherboard manufacturers are currently releasing a series of updates for motherboards that fix an Intel eTVB bug that the company recently identified as a contributing factor to the issues.

Once you’ve updated your BIOS to the latest version, your next step is to make sure your motherboard is running your processor at Intel’s base power settings. Another contributing factor to the instability is that motherboard manufacturers were running Intel processors beyond their recommended power limits, so they were running at high clock speeds for long periods of time when overpowered, causing them to heat up.

Intel probably has some responsibility for this, as they didn’t seem to care when these motherboards shipped with Intel CPU samples and performed well in benchmarks. Regardless, Intel has insisted that motherboard manufacturers now use their processors with the default baseline power settings. This should be enabled by default with your new BIOS, but if it isn’t, look for an “Intel baseline” setting in your BIOS.

If your motherboard doesn’t have a new BIOS update to fix any of the issues yet, Intel has also released recommendations for various processors to address these stability issues, which you can set yourself in your motherboard’s BIOS. We’ve listed all of Intel’s recommended stable settings for games like The First Descendant in the tables below.

Intel Motherboard Settings

Here are the recommended default Intel motherboard settings to prevent The First Descendant from crashing:

Core i5 13600K/KF and 14600K/KF

Core i5 13700K/KF and 14700K/KF

Core i5 13900K/KF and 14900K/KF

Core i5 13900KS and 14600KS

If you make all of the above changes, your Intel system should be much more stable when running The First Descendant, but it’s definitely a frustrating time for gamers with the latest Intel processors, and reducing your CPU’s power limits will also slow it down. Hopefully, Intel will find a solution to the root cause soon.

If you’re interested in seeing if your system is otherwise up to the task of running the game, check out The First Descendant’s system requirements and read our Ultimate Descendants guide to find out why you should add one to your list.