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Update: The Diablo 4 team are investigating reports of RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards crashing or dying while playing the game's closed beta. Customer support says Blizzard is "working closely with Nvidia to identify affected hardware configurations and gather as many data points as possible to assist in the investigation."
For affected users, the team offers the following advice in a forum thread (opens in new tab):
If your card is still not working, try these troubleshooting steps:
- Conduct a complete power cycle (AC OFF->AC ON) and see if GPU can be detected under Windows.
- If GPU can be found under Windows, do a clean driver install.
Original story: Fresh reports suggest some RTX 3080 Ti (opens in new tab) graphics cards are running horribly, or even dying, while playing the Diablo 4 closed beta over the weekend.
In what appears to be an issue closely resembling when Amazon's MMO New World was bricking RTX 3090 GPUs (opens in new tab), the Diablo 4 beta appears to expose a potentially fatal flaw in some high-end Nvidia GPUs. Across Reddit (opens in new tab) and the Blizzard forums (opens in new tab), users are reporting that during the beta their monitors go black, GPU fans run full speed, and their system restarts. Sometimes these symptoms are also accompanied by an error code and a dead GPU, though not every time.
It appears that most of the users affected by the issue are using RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards manufactured by Gigabyte, however, the scale of the issue is not yet known.
YouTuber Mortismal Gaming (opens in new tab) also notes they suffered the same issue on a Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti graphics card while playing the game.
Diablo 4 is unlikely to be the cause of the issue itself, more so a catalyst for exposing a weakness that may have already been present in the affected cards. This was the case with New World. EVGA noticed some poor soldering (opens in new tab) on a batch of its cards that, when running at extremely high frame rates and with spiky load—in that case while playing New World—would result in failure.
If that's the same here while playing Diablo 4, it may be on Gigabyte to address this issue, not Blizzard. Blizzard may also choose to limit the maximum frame rate in Diablo 4 to try and not expose players to any possible issues their hardware may have.
You can also likely protect yourself from these issues, but bear in mind that without all the information we can't be too certain as to how effective these measures may be. Still, heading into Diablo 4's open beta weekend, it's nice to feel like there's some sort of safety net for RTX 3080 Ti owners.
You can limit your frame rate in the game's options settings to potentially lessen the load on your GPU, but it's worth looking at doing it from within the Nvidia settings to totally ensure that your GPU is not running at the ragged edge.
