Diablo 4 Breaks GPUs? Nvidia Investigates the Matter
The Diablo IV beta has a similar problem with GeForce RTX cards as New World had over a year ago.
It seems that with Diablo IV we have a repeat of New World. As in the case of Amazon's MMORPG, Nvidia and Blizzard are dealing with the issue of the beta version of the new Diablo tormenting GPUs to death.
The problem seems to mainly (or even exclusively) affect players with GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPUs. On Reddit and Blizzard's official forum you can find statements from people who, after the launch of the Diablo 4 beta have noticed GPU fans running at maximum speed. Sometimes they experience reboots, and in extreme cases, Internet users reported that an error occurred and the GPU was damaged.
Of course, such revelations are best approached with a great deal of caution. As in the case of New World and GeForce RTX 3090, most likely Diablo IV is not so much detrimental to graphics cards as it is highlighting faults in these chips. After all, as also pointed out by Internet users (including the host of the YouTube channel JayzTwoCents), modern software is unlikely to damage working components (if it wasn't designed to do so) - at most it can overload them so that hidden hardware defects become apparent.
Two years ago, the problem turned out to be faulty voltage regulation circuits that could not withstand high temperatures when the GPU was under heavy load. Probably this time, too, we are dealing with a similar defect in the RTX 3080 Ti model prepared by Gigabyte (for it is this brand that is mentioned in the context of problems in Diablo 4). Especially since some Internet users of these cards report that they have encountered similar problems in other games as well.
Nevertheless, the developer should still make an effort not only to identify the fault, but also to reduce the burden put on the components by Diablo 4. As early as a week ago, during early access, there were reports of a possible memory leaks in Diablo 4 (via the Reddit forum).
Until Nvidia and Blizzard have identified the source of the problem, we can only recommend that you enable a limit on the maximum number of frames per second displayed. You can do this from within Nvidia's Control Panel:
- go to the "Manage 3D settings" section and search for and enable the "Maximum frame rate" option (don't confuse it with "Maximum background application frame rate"!);
- select the number of fps (for example, the refresh rate of our screen) and confirm.
To be sure, it's also better to restart the game or even reboot the system.
