"Render Device Lost" Fix for RTX

I know the “render device lost” bug has been making a comeback with the new nvidia RTX series graphics cards. I recently upgraded to an RTX 2070 and started to experience the the issue as well. Many threads say that overclocked cards is the cause as Overwatch is very sensitive to instability. I have attempted to underclock my MSI RTX 2070 Duke 8G OC back to stock values with no avail.

However, I then tried underclocking the memory instead of the core clock and it seems to have fixed the problem for now, or at least it hasn’t crashed within 2 games like it used to. I tested further and tried raising the memory clock back up and it began to crash as it used to. Lowering the clock once again gave me stable games.

My only explanation is that the transition to GDDR6 memory in the RTX cards must not be playing well with some part of the Overwatch code.

tl;dr: Those experiencing the “render device lost” crash with RTX cards should try underclocking the graphics memory to the lowest possible value.

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Howdy!

Thanks for sharing this information! I Just wanted to make a few quick call outs. We do not have any outstanding known bugs with Render Device Lost errors occurring with the new 2000 series using factory settings but we are always keeping an eye out for any trending issues. I would like to clarify Overwatch does not support overclocking hardware, none of our games do so this is a good workaround for anyone tweaking system settings.

Thanks again for taking the time to post this information.

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UPDATE: After shutting my computer down and trying to play overwatch again the next day, I’m right back to where I started with the game crashing before I can even finish a game. I have not changed any settings since the last time. However, I have updated my graphics drivers since yesterday so that might be the cause.

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I’d be interested to know if you find a solution. I recently upgraded to an RTX2070 and now get the same crash after 1-2 games (sometimes it lasts longer as it seems a little random). In my thread someone has suggested installing the geforce drivers from October so that will be my next step when I have some time to experiment.

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This IS a trending issue, and everyone I know who has a new card has problems with Overwatch, and only Overwatch.

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Agreed. I attempted multiple times with all kinds of “homebrew remedies”, there is no known fix for this error. Drivers have remained up to date but nothing has provided any kind of fix. How is it that ONLY overwatch has this render issue, when other games dont?

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best way for me to fix this problem and only fixed it so it would happen once a month now, is that I rolled back to older drivers and will stay there till the game stops functioning on them.

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Under-clocking didn’t work for me. I rolled back my drivers and started getting a blue screen instead. Sadly I think because not many people have RTX cards currently and it’s only happening in Overwatch that it won’t be addressed for a while.

Pyramidian, I have tried every fix you have to the exact results using an MSI rtx 2070 Gaming x graphics card. The issue just began two days ago and the game has become unplayable. Ive been banned and lost over 160 sr. So much money for a graphics card that is not working with the one game I actually play. Video rendering software such as adobe is working fine however so I am assuming this is an Overwatch Exclusive issue.

I have been crashing to desktop with an error code and option to submit to blizz since the Halloween patch. I NEVER crashed before until that damn patch. It is infuriating to say the least because I can’t even participate in the season placements since I never know when I might crash again.

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I’m experiencing the same issue with the RTX 2070 Founder’s Edition + Ryzen 5. The problem is relatively intermittent, and I’ve tried driver reinstalls, underclocking, turning off hardware acceleration in several apps, etc. with no luck.

Please let me know if there’s any information I can provide to help.

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I’m also having this issue with my EVGA RTX 2070. Not overclocked. It feels like it happens more often when I’m about to get killed, but I can’t say for certain.

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I’m having the same issue with my Gigabyte RTX 2070 OC 8GB. Never had this issue with my previous GTX 1060.

Also, when I first got the card and used the driver back then (before the 417.22 driver update), my fps in game was easily steady at 144 with v-sync on, but then the 417.22 driver completely messed it up and now am struggling to stay above 120 with the SAME EXACT GRAPHICAL SETTINGS. Had to turn everything down to medium or below, especially Dynamic Reflections which is a huge culprit for bad fps.

This is very frustrating to see, especially from two giant companies in Blizzard and nVidia for having such poor optimisation and hardware-software issues.

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I’d like to address this specifically because it’s a common misconception about the Rendering Device Lost error. We actually aren’t the only game that has this error. This is just a unique error message we display when you experience a Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) error while playing Overwatch. You may be having the same problems with other programs and not associate them because our game has a special error message for this PC level problem.

You may experience them more while playing Overwatch than other applications you use personally, but there are a couple reasons for this. First off, we’re going to be using different drivers than other games you play, most likely. Our engine also doesn’t pull punches with your hardware. It’ll use as much of your PC as you let it, which makes it kind of a stress testing application if you’re at super high settings. If you’re getting a rendering device lost error, the overwhelming majority of the time, there’s something going on with your PC that we are triggering, but that is a legitimate problem you must fix. This isn’t a hard and fast rule - we have had a bug or two in the past that caused this, but these are super rare and we don’t know of any at the moment.

There are a number of possible fixes for the Rendering Device Lost error message, but nothing is one size fix all. I recommend checking out that link and going through the troubleshooting. If it doesn’t work, this is a very involved error message, you’re honestly best supported by contacting our support agents.

[[Edited: Removed old troubleshooting - this was confirmed to not work for this issue. See the latest blue post for updates.]]

For anybody who sees this post in the future - this above work around is for a very specific point in time (the week of Dec 3 2018 until future drivers are released which fix the error.) If you see this post far in the future, you may instead want to update your driver.

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Thank you for acknowledging an issue found with 417.22. Feels like every other driver update from nVidia is trash.

This was happening already on my RTX card on drivers 417.01 before the new 417.22 update. It needs to be looked into further. People have posted 13 threads about this in the last 7 days. To keep saying it’s not a trending issue isn’t acceptable. I bet if all 40 million of your players bought RTX cards it would be fixed in 24 hours.

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This began a day prior to the nvidia 412.22 update out of nowhere when an enemy Mccree used his ultimate on me. Completely random but its been happening since on a brand new build even on overwatch’s LOWEST SETTINGS with an MSI RTX 2070 Gaming X graphics card… There has to be a problem here and more and more posts are proving that this is a developing issue. At least I would assume so given the evidence. I really do not care who is responsible to fix the issue I just miss playing Overwatch and I lost so much SR this season from game crashes.

Just want to add to this
Its really depressing that the 2080 cards are also having the issue. This game runs fine on cards from 2 generations ago. I really hope they fix this issue because this is the one game I actually care about playing and more and more people keep experiencing this awful issue. So far all other games on my computer run flawlessly. I think the worst part about this is the fact I didn’t have a single issue for over three weeks of using my 2070…then one random night overwatch and my graphics card decided to fight. Blizzard please look into this. It has been weeks and more and more people have been commenting here. It is clearly trending among the small population who could afford these graphics cards.

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I think the driver issue is causing error # BLZOWCLI00000004 and not the rendering device lost issue on RTX cards but it seems to be in an effort to see if they were related. i’m getting the feels that’s why it was suggested by the staff

Has anyone found a fix to this? I am getting the same rendering device lost error. I’m also having trouble with Battlefield 5 crashing to desktop randomly with no error message. I’m presently using the 417.35 driver that came out on the 12/12/18.

I’ve been scouring forums for the past week trying all kinds of suggested fixes. I’ve reinstalled windows about 4 times. Reinstalled/updated drivers several times. Tried uninstalling drivers with DDU. No overclocks, no temperature issues. CPU/GPU/Memory benchmarks seem to run fine. I can’t get to the bottom of it.

It’s so weird, as the original poster stated, the problem seems to happen randomly after about ~15-30 minutes of gaming.

Ryzen 5 2600 (water cooled)
EVEGA RTX 2070 XC
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16Gb 3200Mhz
Gigabyte Aorus Ultra Gaming x470
Western Digital 500Gb NVMe M2
750W power supply

This worked for me.

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