Why on earth would you do all those steps (especially the hardware stuff) if renaming the exe file works for you. If that works for you can safely say that this issue is not hardware related.
Perhaps you should read the blue post again about renaming the exe file and what exactly it does.
I was already planning on upgrading those components. I also replaced my case went from a Meshify C to NZXT H700. And I know what the work around does. But we shouldn’t have to do this. Also my roomate has a RTX 2070 and has zero issues with Overwatch. So I am very curious what the culprit is. Not all RTX users have the issue.
No, you shouldn’t have to do this but right now it is the only thing that works for a bunch of us. There is nothing else that can be done right now when it seems the issue lies with NVidia’s driver profiles. All you can do is wait and keep using the work around. Be glad we at least have one that works, instead of having to deal with constant crashes to desktop.
Edit: I have used two different GPU brands so far, and they both had the same issue. I find it odd that your roommate has zero issues. It makes me wonder if he/she plays only for a few now and then, as I only had the issue about once a week (I play OW most days) before I started using the renaming method. It does sound like the problem is driver profile but also hardware related if your roommate really doesn’t have the issue. Makes me wonder if he/she simple got a GPU from the latest batch of RTX2070.
Earlier on in this thread someone mentioned issues with a certain brand of GPU memory being an issue, although after reading up on it, I noticed that even Samsung memory has issues as well. But if Samsung is better than why does this issue only mainly plague Overwatch? Just note that I still don’t believe this means Overwatch is at fault because it is clearly still related to driver profiles or else one would still crash with OverwatchTest as well.
I recall Blizzard mentioning that they have an idea what is causing it and they are communicating with NVidia to get a fix. All we can really do is wait. Nothing we say or do will speed it up and at least we can play with the workaround. There are some individuals in this thread whom couldn’t even get the workaround to work for them, which is far worse than being able to play with a small nuisance of having to retype everything when you log in again.
Same issue as everyone, here are my specs:
Ryzen 7 2700x stock
Mobo ASUS Strix ROG X370-F
32 GB Corsair DDR4 at 2933mhz
EVGA RTX 2080 XC
The thing that’s funny about this whole ordeal is Nvidia doesn’t know or mentioned theses issues on list of current bugs for the latest driver, man I even replaced a card because of the crashes with OW thinking I had a bad GPU. So the question here is simple, why Nvidia has not been made aware of the issues with the game? Why it doesn’t appear on the known bug list? Activision Blizzard is more busy firing employees than bringing solution to it’s customers.
have you tried the newest 419.17 version?
This probably doesn’t apply to most of us but there is one TDR fix in 419.17:
Windows 7x64/8.1x64: Fixes random application crash or TDR introduced in previous GeForce display driver 418.81. [2504448]
NVidia has been made aware of it:
See the part which says:
We’re working with NVidia now to see if we can figure out exactly why this is
happening.
I’ve been conducting a “study” and I think I’ve consistently found some results.
Using MSI Afterburner and the in-game temperature display, I’ve found that the RTX 2080 GPU severely overheats before crashing. The regular temperature for when I play is about 60-75 degrees Celsius. As I play more games, at about the one hour mark of a session I see my temperature slowly creep up to 85 degrees Celsius, sometimes spiking to a maximum of 190 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, almost immediately, I get the crash “Rendering Device Lost: Application Closing.”
Before people ask, I am running on all low settings, have killcam off, (basically all of the stuff listed here as recommendations) and do not have my GPU overclocked (and measures in place to prevent it).
I think this is very interesting as I only just noticed this.
A separate theory is that something in the Winter Wonderland update caused this. Based on the time this thread started, this may be true. How about you guys? Did this only start after/during the Winter Wonderland update? It did for me.
I would also like to add that I’ve backdated my drivers as well.
Edited 2/24/19: The specific version is 411.70, which I’d imagine is far enough back. I was told to use this version via a support ticket on one of my other accounts. Once I changed all of my settings to low/off and underclocked my GPU, the issues stopped. They came back recently however, and worse than ever. The other day on my other account, I crashed over 5 times in one competitive game. This account is close to being banned/penalized as well, just from quick play games! You can imagine that this issue is extreme, seen as you have to leave so many quick play games to get just a warning for it. I’m literally afraid to play now, which sucks because Overwatch is my favorite game and I’ve improved a lot this season. Also, I make videos on this game and if I can’t meet my deadlines because of this, I’m screwed.
Please look into what causes the overheat because I believe there is a major connection.
It goes like this: Something causes overheat, overheat occurs, crash occurs. I assume the overheat is because the RTX 2080 automatically tries to overclock while playing Overwatch, but I feel this is ruled out because I underclocked and monitor my GPU while playing and don’t see this happening.
Two mysteries left: What causes the overheat, and why/when did this start?
I’m still using 417.71 and OverwatchTest.exe. I don’t trust Nvidia’s drivers lately so I stick with what works.
I just purchased an RTX 2080 last week to replace my dead GTX 980 Ti. I just started getting the same error message “Render Device Lost” sporadically. I tried about every fix that I could find, including the “OverwatchTest.exe” workaround, and still get the error message. It’s not very frequent, but it happens every two or three games I play. This is only happening specifically on Overwatch. None of my other games are experiencing this issue.
Hey there, I just wanted to hop on and say I have been having these problems since installing a brand new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, not just in overwatch, but a couple other games as well (namely Hitman 2, and Apex Legends, though I think Apex is its own set of problems).
Since these problems have been occurring I have scoured for every type of fix under the sun.
After fresh installing to up-to-date drivers the crashes got even worse.
Doing all of the attempted changes in conjunction (with the exception of the overwatchtest.exe fix) seemed to make the problem better! Fooooor exactly 2 quick plays.
I’m at my wit’s end. I have not contacted NVIDIA support because for some reason their is no option to register my type of GPU on their website, so I can’t get access to tech support.
I understand this is not the only game I am having issues in, but this is where I have found the most fixes, and I am hoping that with some development and “Working” Fix, that I may be able to help the lives of my other games as well.
PC Specs below:
OS: Windows 10 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.70GHz
RAM: G. SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 3200 MHz
GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 WINDFORCE 8G GDDR6
Disk1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB NVMe M.2
Disk2: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 1TB SSD SATA
If anyone has any other questions about my quest or my rig, please feel free to ask. I want to get this fixed!!!
Well here is some additional Info…
The Render Device Lost is not just affecting RTX Cards but 10 Series cards as well.
Now thankfully Overwatch is just closing down when this issue Hits WoW , The game Doesn’t close, it will freeze the Graphics and on some tests will Hard Crash the System, especially if you run Audio through GPU via the HDMI cable. Now this issue is across Many Games and depending on the set-up can be Hard Crash (requiring manual Reboot) like I am seeing or minor crash that you can recover from. The Cause is the same bad memory leak from Driver that results in game crash or stall. The major reason as to why Nvidia hasn’t been able to test it or provide a better solution for Windows 10 users is the fact that 1803 and just released 1809 version of the OS the logging location of the driver crash has changed. Now because of that change Nvidia argued that they didn’t receive reports from their Windows 10 users, hence Windows 10 users don’t have a problem, yet they acknowledged that they weren’t receiving error reports because of the change. So now here we are, unable to play Blizzard games because of this issue.
Renaming to OverwatchTEST.exe worked for a couple of hours. After that, it went back to crashing with the same error.
Do I need to rename it over and over again just to play?
New computer, not even a week old.
Gigabyte Geforce RTX 2080
i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20 GHZ
16.0 GB RAM
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
What’s weird is that my boyfriend just got the same GPU and he’s not getting any errors (yet). His pc arrived 3 days after mine and only started playing yesterday.
No, you don’t need to rename it over and over again; you only need to rename it every time the game has been patched. If you still crash even after renaming you may be facing an extra or simply a different issue. Blizzard advised anyone for whom the renaming doesn’t work to start a new thread.
What I have noticed, although I could easily be wrong is that people with 2080 GPUs seem to crash more often than people with 2070 GPUs. I have the latter (also a Gigabyte) and when I built my new computer I had a crash about once a day until I changed my FPS to being display based and the crashes then only occurred about once a week. Renaming completely stopped the crashing all together; which probably points to an NVidia driver profile issue.
You and your BF may want to check to see if your GPUs use VRAM from different companies. GPU-Z is an application which can tell you what brand you are using, such as Micron or Samsung. You may also want to check out HWMonitor to see if your graphics card may be overheating.
Thanks, OrangeLion. I downloaded HWMonitor a few days ago and have been monitoring my graphics card temp eversince. It’s only 75-76 celsius before the GPU crashes with the render device error. It never goes beyond 76 tbh.
I do have my FPS set to custom - 300 max, I’ll try doing display-based and see how it goes.
If this still fails, I’m returning this pc to the store and have them look at it.
Any update from Blizzard ?
after last update renaming the .exe stopped to work, now it gives a new error every 4-5 games
Just making sure, did you rename the new .exe file again after the update or are you still using the old renamed .exe? If it is the latter, it won’t work with the .exe being different from the updated one.
What worked for me is setting the Memory Clock (MHz) to the lowest setting (-502) in MSI Afterburner.
I hope this gets fixed. Shame I can’t use my graphics card to its full capacity.