Project CARS 3 Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

Project CARS 3 is the newly released racing video game that’s developed by Slightly Mad Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game releases...

Subodh Gupta

Last updated on August 26, 2020

Subodh Gupta

Author

Subodh loves to write content whether it may be tech-related or other. After writing on tech blog for a year, he becomes passionate about it. He loves playing games and listening to music. Apart from blogging, he is addictive to the gaming PC builds and smartphone leaks.

Project CARS 3 is the newly released racing video game that’s developed by Slightly Mad Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. The game releases in August 2020 and available for multiple platforms like Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. It offers both the single and multiplayer mode that includes ultimate driving and racing experience with improved graphics, customizations, up-gradation of cars & drivers. However, some of the PC players are getting issues with the Project CARS 3 game like Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops, etc.

So, if you’re also one of the victims and looking for several methods to fix any of these issues, then you’re in the right place. Here we’ve shared all the troubleshooting guide below that should gonna work with you in most cases.

Although there are some other issues or bugs available that some of the PC players may experience like stuck at the loading screen, stuck at the download/update process, can’t connect to the server, server request time out, black screen issues, other performance or controller related issues, other graphical glitches, audio-related issues, and more. Luckily there are some of the commonly used methods that can help you out throughout most of the issues. Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into it.

Why Does Project CARS 3 Keep Crashing?

It’s possible that either one or several reasons can cause your Project CARS 3 game crashing while starting or during the gameplay. Therefore, we can consider some of the expected reasons below:

Minimum System Requirements:

OS: Window 10 (+ specific versions of 7)

Processor: 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5 3450 or 4.0 GHz AMD FX-8350

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: GTX680 or equivalent

DirectX: Version 11

Storage: 50 GB available space

Sound Card: Direct X compatible sound card

Additional Notes: For VR or triple screen use, GTX980 or equivalent

Project CARS 3 Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into the steps below. Keep in mind that both the Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for the Project CARS 3 game. So, if in case, you haven’t updated your graphics driver yet, do this first.

1. Update Graphics Drivers

If you’re using the Nvidia graphics card then update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from the Nvidia official site here. But if you’re using the AMD graphics card on your system, then update the latest AMD Drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

Open Steam on your Windows.
Head over to the Settings > Click on the In-Game option.
Click on the checkbox to disable “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game“.
Once the checkbox mark is removed, click on OK.

3. Adjust Discord Settings

Launch Discord > Click on User Settings.
Select Voice & Video from the left sidebar.
Scroll down a bit and click on the Advanced.
Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.
Then disable Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority.
Now, go to Overlay.
You can also turn off the in-game overlay.
Next, head over to Appearance.
Go to Advanced.
Disable Hardware Acceleration.
Once done, restart the system.

4. Adjust Nvidia Control Panel Settings

Click on Adjust image settings with preview under 3D settings.
Select Use the advanced 3D image settings.
Next, launch the Nvidia Control Panel.
Click on Manage 3D settings > Go to Global Settings.
Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
- Disable Image Sharpening
- Enable Threaded Optimization
- Use Maximum Performance for Power Management
- Turn off Low Latency Mode
- Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance mode

5. Change AMD Control Panel Settings

Go to Global Graphics.
- Turn off Radeon Anti-Lag
- Turn off Radeon Boost
- Use Application settings for Anti-Aliasing Mode
- Set Anti-aliasing Method to Multi-sampling
- Turn off Morphological Filtering
- Disable Image Sharpening
- Turn off Anisotropic Filtering
- Use Performance mode for Texture Filtering Quality
- You can also enable Surface Format Optimization
- AMD Optimization for the Tesselation Mode
- Wait for V-sync – Turn it off
- Use AMD optimization for the Shader Cache
- Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
- Turn off Maximum Tesselation Level
- Set Graphics for the GPU Workload
- Turn off the Radeon Chill
- Disable Frame Rate Target Control

6. Verify Game Files via Steam

Project CARS 3 gamers on Steam client can follow the below steps:

Open the Steam Library by logging into the account
You can find the Project CARS 3 game there
Right-click on the game and click on Properties
Select the Local Files tab
Then click on Verify Integrity of game files
Wait for the process and then restart the game to check whether the issue has been fixed or not

7. Uninstall Recent Windows 10 Update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. So, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite buggy and causing so many errors or problems.

Go to Start menu > Click on Settings
Next, go to Update and Security
Click on View update history
Now, if you can see that there is an update having KB4535996 has been already installed. Make sure to uninstall it.
Here you will see Uninstall updates option on the top of the page.
Click on it and select the mentioned cumulative update version.
Right-click on it > Select Uninstall.
It may take some time to delete that update and your system may restart automatically.
Have some patience and you can also manually reboot your Windows PC (if required).

8. Remove Temporary Files

Press Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the RUN program.
Now, type %temp% and press enter.
You will get a bunch of temporary files on a page.
Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
Next, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all the files.
Some times some of the temporary files can’t be deleted. So, leave them as it is and close it.

9. Set Default CPU and Graphics Speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra-high performance from the CPU and GPU from the very first day. So, most of the users either buy an overclocked version or manually increased the overclocking speed. So, if you’ve also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing that you’re experiencing bottleneck or lagging or crashing related issues, just set it to default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or Zotac firestorm application in order to lower the clocking speed. Once done, you can run the Project CARS 3 game to check whether it’s crashing at startup or not.

That’s it. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any queries.

Project CARS 3 Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

Why Does Project CARS 3 Keep Crashing?

Minimum System Requirements:

Recommended System Requirements: