The past week I have started having the game freeze in the middle of competitive matches. There is a dialog box that says “Rendering Device has been lost.” Usually whatever I am seeing on the screen just freezes but I can still hear all the audio. Sometimes I have been able to close the game, relaunch, and jump back in. Other times, alt-tab, and control alt delete are responsive but when I actually choose another application or task manager nothing happens. I end up having to reset my computer by holding down the power button. I have used this computer to play OW for 2 years and this just started happening about 2 weeks ago. I have not changed anything. Please help.
I’m having the same problem. I’m using a RTX 2060 though, but on the last day it happened 3 times. It’s a pain, can’t close Overwatch, I have to reboot everytime.
Hello NackNack. “Rendering Device has been lost” is Overwatch’s standard error message when your graphics card shuts down while the game is in operation. There can be a wide variety of issues that can cause this but since you are using a standard GTX 1060 graphics card I need you to start with these troubleshooting steps first:
Since you are using a RTX 20X0 series graphics card, you will have a specific known issue that NVidia has been investigating and trying to resolve. However there is a temporary work around solution for RTX users which you can find out about here:
As a reminder, this troubleshooting step is only for users with the RTX series of graphics card and will not work for those with NVidia GTX or any AMD graphics card.
I started getting the same issue as OP, but I have a 1050ti
I thought maybe it started as a result of getting a new monitor, but I wonder if it’s the latest Nvidia driver that’s to blame…
1 Like
So I followed the instructions and the Windows file checker did find some corrupted files, which were repaired. I tried playing again and didn’t experience the error, for a few weeks.
Then then the error started returning, it happens probably once every hour or two. I have all my drivers updated, I ran file checker again, no errors found. I continue to get the same error. I have also experienced it while running CPUID; it shows that the highest temp my GPU gets is 79 degrees.
Please help. I can’t play comp if my game just crashes.
Depending on the version of 1060 you have, the default max temp for most of them is 83C. Since you’re getting close to that, you may be experiencing performance throttling. Are you also set to High Performance mode in your Windows power settings, and in the nVidia control panel? I’d definitely look into making your hardware run cooler before anything else.