Permafrost is out in Early Access: hotfixes disable FSR on RTX cards to cut crashes

Permafrost launched in Early Access on Steam on October 9, a few hours later than planned, and SpaceRocket Games shipped two hotfixes the same day to cut down crashes on NVIDIA cards. The fix is blunt: FSR is now disabled on RTX 20, 30, 40 and 50 series GPUs. If you’re on a GeForce RTX and the game kept crashing, make sure you have the latest version before you jump back in. On October 8 we covered what PC it needs, and those requirements haven’t moved: 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 6GB at minimum.

What happened at launch

The studio pushed back the planned 14:00 CEST launch to fold feedback from the 2h Preview into the launch version:

• Rebindable movement keys, one of the most requested changes.
• Performance improvements, co-op improvements and localization fixes.

Then the two hotfixes landed:

• Hotfix: FSR disabled on NVIDIA RTX 20 and 30 series cards to reduce crashes.
• Hotfix 2: FSR disabled on NVIDIA RTX 40 and 50 series cards, for the same reason.

The update downloads automatically. If you don’t see it, restart Steam. If you still crash, the developers ask you to check the fixes pinned in the Bug Reporting section and upload your logs at filehub.toplitz-productions.com. They also say more hotfixes are coming this weekend and that they’re working on performance across as many PCs as possible.

In practice, if you were counting on FSR for extra frames on a midrange RTX card, it isn’t available for now. At the time of writing, Permafrost had 2,739 concurrent players on Steam. You can play it solo or in online co-op with up to 4 players.

Permafrost PC requirements

It’s Windows only. These are the requirements from the Steam page:

Note the RAM: 16 GB is already the minimum. The minimum lists DirectX 11 and the recommended lists DirectX 12.

Which GPUs run it

The recommended bar is high, so many popular cards clear the minimum but sit below the recommended:

• GTX 1650 and RX 580: fall short of the minimum.
• GTX 1060 6GB: just clears the minimum, but grades F against the recommended, so expect it to struggle.
• RTX 3060, RTX 4060 and RTX 3070: clear the minimum and grade C against the recommended. Playable, but tight. The 3070 sits just under because the recommended calls for the 3070 Ti.
• RTX 4070 and RX 9070 XT: meet the recommended with a B.
• RTX 5070 and RTX 5080: grade A, with room to spare.

All grades are measured against the recommended requirement and assume 16 GB of RAM.

What about the Steam Deck?

Valve hasn’t verified it yet. Based on specs alone, our estimate is an F and the Deck falls short of the minimum, but that is only a spec-based estimate. The details are on Permafrost on Steam Deck.

Can your PC run Permafrost?

Here’s how your rig grades against Permafrost and two other survival games with similar demands:

Game	Rec. GPU score	Rec. RAM	Min. RAM	Your PC
Permafrost	22,430	16 GB	16 GB	?
ARK: Survival Ascended	22,650	32 GB	16 GB	?
Abiotic Factor	21,750	16 GB	8 GB	?

The full Permafrost page shows your GPU’s exact grade and which upgrade helps most if you fall short.

Sources: Permafrost on Steam, Hotfix 2: RTX 40 and 50, Hotfix: RTX 20 and 30, Early Access launch, Launch delay notice