Elden Ring Nightreign is here, releasing on May 29th to a wide range of platforms. Let’s focus on PC, though. So far, the game has seen mixed reviews on Steam, but what we can gather from the bad reviews is that most of the negativity derives from the game’s multiplayer format and poor solo-queue experience, plus a lack of duo support.

If you do happen to have a couple of friends to play with, then Nightreign seems like a blast – unless you’re hit by performance issues. Users have been reporting stuttering issues on modern hardware, and the devs have come out to officially confirm that “some PC configurations” are being hit by frame drops. The issue is currently being investigated.

RTX 40 and 50 owners report poor performance in Elden Ring Nightreign

We know that the game is capped at 60 FPS. That may already be an annoyance for some people, at least until a mod comes along to fix it, but stuttering and frame drops are what really make a game unfun to play. As part of the v1.01 patch notes, the developers had this to say:

“We have confirmed that some PC configurations using the latest graphics cards may experience frame rate drops. We are currently investigating the cause. In the meantime, If you experience significant frame rate drops, you may be able to resolve it by setting the graphics settings from the default “High” to “Medium” or “Low” and lowering the screen resolution, as well as installing the latest drivers for your graphics card.”

Source: FromSoftware / Bandai Namco

Outside of this, there is no official fix for stuttering yet, so we’ll have to wait and see what the next patch brings. The devs explain the age-old ‘Verify Integrity of Game Files’ trick for Steam users, but there’s probably only a slim chance this will make a difference. On Steam community threads for the game, we’ve seen a number of users dealing with stutters.

One user says the “Game has terrible performance” despite running on an RTX 4090, and we’ve seen similar reports from 4080 owners. RTX 50 series cards also seem to be affected, with an RTX 5080 owner reporting “Completely unplayable hitching lag” on the current-gen card. On the flipside, 30 series users don’t seem to be running into the same problems, so FromSoftware’s note about “the latest graphics cards” seems to apply to the RTX 50 and 40 series cards.

This wouldn’t be the first time Nvidia’s newer cards have had problems. The company has been keen to address driver issues in the past few months, so we’ll have to wait and see if any new drivers can help fix Nightreign’s issues.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.