Is Diablo 4 really bricking GPUs? I have come across several articles reporting the game is causing untimely deaths of many Nvidia 3080 Ti GPUs. There has supposedly been a single report of a Radeon RX 6900 XT failing as well.
What are your thoughts?
Does this deter you from playing the open beta that went live today?
Here are some of the articles I came across.
https://www.thegamer.com/diablo-4-devs-are-working-on-a-fix-for-bricked-gpus-nvidia/
https://www.techspot.com/news/98046-diablo-4-beta-has-bricking-graphics-cards.html
https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-4-rtx-3080-ti-issue/
Some speculate limiting frame rate will fix the issue, however others are saying otherwise.
What are your thoughts on the situation?
I have a 3080, and it would not deter me from the beta. These reports blame the game, and game uses directx api. I have never seen a report like this ever show a game doing some strange internal thing. It's always just using API and driving the GPU via it.
What it boils down to is that some users have poorly cooled PC, and some GPUs are poorly manufactured or have cheaper parts. So the fix will be to limit performance or perhaps limit the more stressful instruction sets used. Every report mentions that it is a very small number of users. These user might have custom fan curves, poorly cooled cases, OC, or other permutations.
So i read these titles like "Game stresses GPU. GPU dies.", then they want to blame the game. It's just like every steam that whines about a game using GPU at 100%.
So theoretically the only way software can damage hardware is if there is already an underlying issue with the hardware that has not surfaced yet? Is that what you are meaning?
I don't know much about how software works or APIs I just know there are some games that have "damaged" GPUs in the past few years.
Is it not possible that there was some overlooked bug that is causing the GPUs to run past their spec and that is what is causing the hardware failures?
DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan provide common API for developers to use, and provide a layer between software and the hardware. That's why you see admin request for software like afterburner, which will directly access, it needs to bypass the layer and use driver/hardware directly. These APIs rely on the manufacturer drivers.
Software can be written to stress hardware like how prime95 uses certain instruction sets and you need to have proper cooling to handle them. GPUs are quite complex with many features (AA, ray tracing, occlusion, shaders, lighting, etc...). Now you can imagine that more features and computations done, along with the rate (FPS) all drive usage, heat, and power.
Now the one GPU that was getting "destroyed" in the past, supposedly by New world, was really, "...EVGA revealed that they discovered, via X-ray analysis, that it was instead “poor workmanship” that killed the cards,..." I perused the links you provided, and the reports said it is quite small, and gigabyte seemed to be the most common factor for some.
As long as a game utilizes the API layer, it is highly unlikely to kill a GPU as long as it is properly cooled and running at normal power and settings. Even then, today CPUs and GPUs have thermal throttling safeguards. Games can be more considerate for heat and power concerns by not running unconstrained on menus (3000 FPS on menu).
Thanks for elaborating. I just was and still am concerned as my RX 6800 XT is the Gigabyte Gaming OC. I didn't want to play the game only to have bricked my GPU.
D4 won't even launch for me, or takes a very long time to display anything. I don't know if that is due to mentioned slow network on game page. I thought it would at least show some sort of splash screen or intro.
I haven't installed it yet. I think I'm going to give it a try tomorrow.
It was bitdefender related. I had to turn off exploit protection for it to launch.
Makes sense. What hardware do you have?
The only alarming thing I am seeing is the game is using all of my VRam which could be a good thing but I have never seen any game use all 16gb.
I never really notice memory usage. I watched a video on how bad the 4070ti is due to memory bus bandwidth, and he was showing 14gb usage in hogwarts.
limit fps and play.
side question? how are you all liking the game so far?
I am preparing for warzone 2 ranked. I must see some review first.
I did not play any diablo game and I want to play path of exile. I think they look similar.
Oh I haven't heard of path of exile, I'll have to check it out as I like those styles of games. That and I'm looking for a new game to bide my time with.
Iong time now I want to try it and game is free to play.
I remember from review that path of exile have big skill tree and there is no end of it.
I did play titan quest and torchlight 2 they are similar to diablo and I did like both of them.
there is game sands of aura, I think its mix of dark souls and diablo I still didnt try it.
Awesome thanks! I'm going to look into it more. I haven't played Titan quest and That sands of Aura looks interesting. Torchlight 2 was good. Thanks for the suggestions.
The queue length was 27 minutes for me and I never waited.
I played for about 30 minutes and it was superfun. Nothing revolutionary to the genre but like I said it was only 30 minutes then I had to go to sleep.