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Anerian79's avatar
Anerian79
Seasoned Traveler
2 years ago
Solved

Apex Legends not starting in DX12 mode

Hello,

couple of seasons back I was normally playing Apex Legends via Steam in DX12 mode (launch option: -eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX12.json). I took a hiatus for some time and tried to play now in Season 18, only to find out that the game does not start anymore. The hardware is the same, the OS is the same (Win 10), the software environment is the same - no system settings changed, no new system applications installed like anti-virus or firewalls. I have updated to the newest Nvidia driver, but to no avail.

The game starts if I remove the DX12 launch option, meaning that it starts in DX11. If I put the DX12 launch option and start the game, I see that the 'r5apex_dx12.exe' executable has started, but after a few seconds if just ends and nothing happens. I tried looking for some logs in the game installation folder, but could not find any. I did find a folder with a name indicating that it contains crash-dumps (\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Apex Legends\Crashpad\db\) so here are all the files from there as a '.zip' archive if anyone wants to take a look:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fHBXTH2VKVL9dmEXCgequjkX2Yx3URGP/view?usp=sharing

Looking forward to any help...

  • EA_Mako's avatar
    EA_Mako
    7 months ago

    Hey everyone,

    Locking this thread down as there have been some changes to DX12 and these commands should no longer be necessary to launch.

    Please check out the thread below if you're running into any issues launching DX12 via Steam, thanks!

    [Steam] DX12 error at launch - Answer HQ

14 Replies

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  • Yeah, `-eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX12.json` does nothing, launching `r5apex_dx12.exe` does nothing either.

    If you can edit the file `Settings.json` and change `r5apex.exe` to `r5apex_dx12.exe` and launch normally (-eac_launcher... not needed) DX12 seems to work just fine.

    FTR, my specs

    Windows 11

    AMD 7940HS

    RX 7600S

  • EA_Mako's avatar
    EA_Mako
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    7 months ago

    Hey everyone,

    Locking this thread down as there have been some changes to DX12 and these commands should no longer be necessary to launch.

    Please check out the thread below if you're running into any issues launching DX12 via Steam, thanks!

    [Steam] DX12 error at launch - Answer HQ

  • EA_Mako's avatar
    EA_Mako
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    4 months ago

    Hey Zabloudil20,

    Locking this thread here as it was from the older AHQ forums and was related to a different situation.

    Unfortunately, the message you're seeing means that your current GPU no longer meets the current minimum system requirements to play Apex.

    Please see our patch notes for more details. 

    This patch removes the option for DirectX 11. We discussed this decision and compared performance between DX11 and DX12 across the entire playerbase in this Dev Update. For additional clarity, DX11 was released in 2009 and as a result it does not have many of the capabilities shared by DX12 and consoles, including previous-gen consoles. Keeping DX11 increasingly requires maintaining two versions of the rendering engine: one only for DX11 and a second shared by every other platform. While continuing to support DX11 allows older GPUs to continue to play the game, it also slows down the development of our rendering engine considerably leading to fewer performance and graphical improvements over time. 

    DirectX 12 is supported by GPUs starting with the AMD Radeon HD 7790 and the Nvidia GTX 960. In Seasons 23 and 24, approximately 1 out of 1000 Apex players were playing on GPUs older than that at any given time. Rather than split our efforts, we decided to focus on improving the engine for the 99.9% of players who can make use of it.