First off, I am using the term “legacy” to refer to any graphics card that isn’t “mainstream”; so, anything in the era of the RTX 16, 30 or 40 series does not apply. Outside of that, I am only referring to the “less popular” cards in their respective generation, such as:
The GTX Titan Black: I originally came across this issue when a friend came to me about their PC having issues running overwatch 2. The claimed the game would crash anytime they picked a character, and if it didn’t, would crash not long after, making it unplayable. Upon inspection, I found that Overwatch 2 seemed to be an outlier. On a test bench system running an i7-770k, a fresh copy of Windows, and only the necessary updates and drivers, I found that only Overwatch 2 did not run correctly. I then repeated this same “test” with a completely different DDR3 system (same results) and then inserted the card into my personal rig (again, same results).
I did not take the time to list the specs of these systems as I am doubtful they are the cause (as will be outlined later), but I can provide details of all systems at request.
Gtx 660: Similar story; another acquaintance using a GTX 660 (Dell OEM version) found the game to be unplayable, even in spite of them barely making the minimum requirements. I went through the same process as the Titan Black and came across identical results.
Lastly, a GTX 750ti. Literally same problem and results.
After monotonous time and energy trying to get the game to at least “work”, I finally found somewhat of a solution by rolling back the drivers, quite far. On all 3 cards, using driver 460.89 immediately solved the issue. All 3 cards we’re able to achieve expected framerates over numerous games, which is a huge step up from “crashing on character select”. I was also able to get Beta driver 385.12 working on the Titan Black, though I did not get the opportunity to test this on the other cards.
I’m no game developer, but I and many others see a pattern here of older graphics cards being entirely neglected, despite being more than capable of playing the game. I haven’t seen any similar topics on here, so I’m hoping this will bring some attention to the gamers who can’t afford a RTX 3070 to play Overwatch 2.