The issue with Diablo 4 bricking some graphic cards

PC General Discussion
1

Unsurprisingly at this point, Diablo 4 still has several memory leaks (for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak). One of them affects the VRAM of your Graphic card, so the longer you play the game, the more VRAM will be consumed up to the point where all VRAM is used and then the graphic card simply shutdown and restart.

That restart of the graphic card can physically harm your graphic card (brick it).

If you are not aware, you can check Diablo 4 reddit for several different memory leak complaints.

Edit: When reading through the thread, just ignore ciller#1236 and Mocha#11359 as they’re here clearly simply derailing the thread/trolling.

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THe gpus clearly have faults already.Putting them under load just caused the fault to show its ugly head. No way software can shutdown a gpu unless something is faulty on the hardware.

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I believe cases of GPU burn out have been attributed to improper seating of the electric cable. Check how well your cables are seated.

Some have also been attributed to GPU faults. Not much can be done about that.

Also, put frame rate caps on your GPU.

You are in control of your PC, use that control for your benefit.

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Does it only apply to specific Graphic Cards? I’m kinda afraid to run D4 because I can’t stop being poor and bricking my graphics card would make my gaming live hell. I’m having a NVidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti.

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There was a specific issue with Gigabyte 3080ti’s. If you have one of those you should check into what they are offering as a fix. Check with Gigabyte, that is.

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I play the game at 30 fps because the cinematic immersion feeling, also power savings.

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You mean there is no way that software with bugs cannot stress a resource utilization up to the point the hardware itself shuts down?

Are you assuming that is a normal behavior and GPUs should function normally having their VRAM fully consumed by a single application process?

Frame rates have nothing to do with the memory leak. I added the link on OP for people like you, who don’t know what a memory leak is, to get informed so you can join the discussion as well.

The first thing to do is to uninstall the high quality assets if you are not playing with 4k.

If you’re playing on 4k, there was a post on reddit (I can’t find it right now) that suggests you to keep monitoring the VRAM usage with an external application and when you notice it is really high, you can either:

  • Close the game. By doing so, it releases the whole VRAM addressing and allows the reusage of it.
  • Change the texture quality to a lower (e.g. high, from ultra) and then change back, this will cause a significant drop in the VRAM usage and seems to “solve” temporarily the leak until it gets high again.

This is an issue affecting all cards. VRAM goes up to a point until it crashes the game. There are so many reports / complaints about this it is not even worth discussing whether or not it happens.

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A memory leak will cause a application to terminate as the application runs out of available resources. It will not cause a piece of hardware to terminate. If you overclock a device you can make it unstable. Then putting a unstable device under load can cause the hardware to shutdown. But again, this is a fault with the hardware (because the overclock is not stable). If you run a GPU at default settings and it shuts down from a application then the gpu is faulty. As it can not operate at manufacturer default settings, so there is something wrong with it somewhere.

I have run this game for 6 hours non-stop with no issues. So that is not indictive of a serious memory leak issue. A memory leak will generally cause a application to run out of resources in around an hour.

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My game has never crashed. So you are mistaken.
Optimization could be worked on but the VRAM issue is clearly not a problem for everyone.

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A memory leak will consume memory indefinitely until the system becomes unstable.
Since this is not Unix, you don’t have the OOM killer to terminate the process which is causing the system to go unstable.

And since this is not memory ram, and it is the graphic card vram, it works also differently the way the graphic cards behave when the whole VRAM is consumed.

A little bit of research or understand of how hardware works is important if you want to discuss it.

Or perhaps you’re not playing 4k or don’t have the high quality assets installed, or you don’t play long enough to have trouble.

Don’t say because you don’t have it, it doesn’t exist. It is the worst kind of argument someone can ever use.

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The first thing to do is to uninstall the high quality assets if you are not playing with 4k.

If you’re playing on 4k, there was a post on reddit (I can’t find it right now) that suggests you to keep monitoring the VRAM usage with an external application and when you notice it is really high, you can either:

  • Close the game. By doing so, it releases the whole VRAM addressing and allows the reusage of it.
  • Change the texture quality to a lower (e.g. high, from ultra) and then change back, this will cause a significant drop in the VRAM usage and seems to “solve” temporarily the leak until it gets high again.

Thanks for the advice. Definitely will uninstall the 4k Assets then, I think I might’ve unnecessarily installed them. Graphic’s already set on high, I think it’ll be fine then ^^

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Nope I play 4k textures, max settings, for 7 hours of the day. You are mistaken sir. I do not have a VRAM issue.

Does there need to be optimizations for the game? Yes. Is it as bad as you say it is? No. Not for everyone.

You should really check into an issue before you apply it universally to everyone.

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13

This is blatant misinformation and speculation.

No cards aren’t getting bricked due to lack of VRAM dear god :man_facepalming:

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You don’t have to uninstall the whole game and reinstall, just modify the game and it allows you to remove them.

I have five billion dollars in assets.

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Facts.

A lack of VRAM tanks performance but that’s about it. I swear these theories on this forum keep getting more bizarre everyday.

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the graphic cards gets shutdown and restarts when the whole vram is consumed OR the there is no more VRAM to comply with the app request. This is not an expected behavior and this can lead to physical harm.

I’m not saying that LACK OF VRAM is harming the graphic cards, but rather this unexpected and unpredictable scenario.

Lack of VRAM affects performance. This is memory leak, which does not cause a lack of VRAM but consumes it whole until the graphic card is shutdown. You’re here playing the misinformation card but you’re the ignorant one here with misinformation.

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More :poop:

You don’t have the first clue about what you’re talking about. I’ve played the game at native 4k since day 1 with both a 4070 Ti and a 4090 for hours and hours at a time with no problem like countless other people.

This is completely baseless and unverified speculation and I’m reporting this entire post for spreading misinformation.

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So your technical argument is that “I’ve played”?
I thought that you were going to put a little effort on your troll here.

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For the 1000000th time games can’t brick a GPU. You’re an idiot and lying through your teeth with zero shame.

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I suspect Chernobyll is mad that his 30XX or smaller GPU lacks the VRAM needed for this game.

MY GPU has enough VRAM and I have yet to have any issues with my 40xx card.

Modern games use a TON of VRAM and older NVIDIA graphics cards have a pitiful amount of available VRAM. Simply put 8 GB of VRAM is probably not enough for D4.

Newer gen (40xx) cards have enough VRAM that the “over” usage of it becomes a non issue. So this is not an issue for everyone and it doesn’t burn out cards at a high enough rate where you can convince me its not the users fault.