Rendering device has been lost

Technical Support
66

Which hardware diagnostic did you run?

67

In my case, solution was switching game to fullscreen (previously I had it on borderless window). And I also updated GPU bios.

P.S. I use Gigabyte RTX 2080 Gaming OC (now with F8 bios).

1 Like
68

I also have this issue with an RTX2080. Can play Apex or BF5 for 5 hours straight and no issues but OW is crashing once an hour with rendering device lost, or sometimes it literally just exits to desktop with no warning.

I canā€™t play anymore as I keep losing SR for ā€˜quittingā€™. Itā€™s really frustrating.

Happens with different drivers and none of the quickfixes work.

69

Not true this issue has been around since the release of OW and its nothing to do with hardware or drivers its OWā€™s terrible optimization. I love when they say itā€™s our hardwares fault blah blah blah if it was my hardwares fault I would be crashing in games that are way more graphically demanding such as a heavily modified version of GTA V but nope never crash there. Wonder why that is.

70

Iā€™m running i7 9th Gen with RTX 2070. The thing that worked for me was changing my rendering scale to 100%. I tried changing everything else and it would work for a little, but then still crash. Hope this helps some of you.

71

Same issue.
Every other game on the galaxy is fine, but Overwatch keep throwing this.

72

This happens to me too. Even after a complete PC change. I donā€™t know why

73

Hi All,

I had this issue as well, This was the fix for me:

  1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch

  2. Rename the Overwatch.exe to OverwatchTest.exe

  3. Doubleclick the OverwatchTest.exe to launch the game.

So far i have not have had the render device lost issue. And this is a fix that was proposed by one of the forum mods from blizzard.

My system:

Msi gaming plus motherboard
Ryzen 2700X
Msi Gforce GTX 1070
16GB RAM

74

Hi guys,
How many of you - having this issue - have multiple screens ?

I experienced the same problem, with my RTX2080 with this setup :

  • Screen 1 Iiyama G-Master GB2760QSU - 1440p @144hz
  • Screen 2 Iiyama Prolite B2783QSU - 1440p @70Hz

Note : I didnā€™t have the issue with my GTX1070 BUT I also had different screens at this time (B2783QSU @70Hz and iiyama Prolite B2475 HDS @70Hz).

For more than a week now, Iā€™ve tried to turn off the second screen when I play overwatch, and didnā€™t have any crash. Iā€™m not saying itā€™s solved for goods, also I like to watch streams with the second screen so itā€™s kinda anoying, but as it may help people experiencing similar crashes, I decided to post ā€œmyā€ (partial) solution here.
Please give us feedback if this solution helped (or not) to try to help Blizzard and Nvidia find a permanent fix.

Full setup :

AMD Ryzen 2700X
Asrock B350 Pro 4
2*16 Gb DDR4 Corsair@3200
KFAĀ² Geforce RTX2080 EX
Western Digital Caviar black SSD 240Gb (System)
Transcend SSD240Gb (Games)
1 Seagate Ironwolf 8Tb + 3 Western Digital 2Tb (Storage)
Iiyama G-Master GB2760QSU - 1440p @144hz
Iiyama Prolite B2783QSU - 1440p @70Hz

1 Like
75

Hey all,

I see quite a few reports regarding the RTX cards, and wanted to see if you have tried to rename the Overwatch executable file as suggested in this thread.

Note that this does not a guaranteed fix, but has helped a lot of players so far. This is specific for those using an RTX card. If using any other card, please make sure to go through the steps listed here thoroughly. Remember to use a Display Driver Uninstaller before updating/reinstalling your graphics drivers.

Have a few seconds to spare? Let me know how Iā€™m doing!

76

Thank you @Nenyasqi.
Iā€™ll try eventually.

Iā€™d happilly have feedback though if somebody else with dual screen have the same issue.

77

Install the stock driver ( in my case with the 1060, from march 2018), and the rendering device error is goneā€¦

When i install the newer drivers, i get the error go down to stock driver: no error in months

Just downgrade the driver to the stock version and you probably wonā€™t see the message again

78

Stock drivers for 2080 have the issue as well. Canā€™t downgrade to an older version, the GPU wouldnā€™t be recognized.

80

I have beein playing Overwatch since 2 years on my current PC - without any problems. Since roughly 2 weeks this error happens to me too. I have check my PC and not installed new software the last two month. Based on that it is quite likely related to the current patches from Overwatch.

After a whole day of reading, trying and failing to fix I am really **issed by the way Blizard is handling that.

  • First I get very motivating messages about ā€œWarning, you will be penalizedā€ - I will get penalized because your damn game crashes ? Thanks for that.
  • Secondly this seems to be a very old and wellknown issue. Why do I have to try endless steps manually ? Have a tool to remove all the caches etc. or implement a good error handling that provides information what the reason is
81

rendering device lost after dying in last seconds of competetive match

got suspended for 8 mins

srsly, burn in hell

82

Why even play comp when you know you have a problem with the pc/game and force others to a losing game?

83

same here. Running a rtx 2080 ti. Build is new, runs smooth as hell. everything is playble with max settings 100+fps. Now here comes overwatch. Losing rendering device from once a day up to every second match. really annoying. nothing seems to fix the ow issue. meanwhile even origin and uplay games seem to work better. sad. i like to play ow, but get a lot bans (not starting to talk about the sr loss tho) for something thatā€™s clearly not my fault. Iā€™m a certified IT system engineer so keep the users-questions for yourself and just fix the stuff.

84

Not sure if this is gonna help anyone, but I found out that trying to minimize the game (alt+tab) after itā€™s started, it will just cause it to crash sooner or later. If you ever alt+tab the game, make sure to restart it as soon as possible to avoid the crash.

It works perfectly fine with the above workaround. Running on RTX 2080. Itā€™s still dumb that there are games which are not fine when you alt+tab in 2019 and Blizzard is not going to do anything to fix it.

85

I got rid of my RTX2080 and just using my spare RX580 since I last posted.

RTX2080 - regular crashes. (never once crashed in Apex or BF5, card itself is fine)

RX580 - zero crashes in two weeks.

This is 110% a Blizzard/Nvidia issue. Blaming it on overclocks and other system issues is a joke.

Donā€™t know which of the two is to blame but they need to sort it out and stop acting like itā€™s some sort of generic system issue, it is their problem.

86

This issue is driving me mad and I start getting really pissed! Iā€™ve lost a freaking 350 SR due to this bug.

Itā€™s always the same for me:
Playing the game with nothing running in the background, not tapping out or anything, itā€™s stable. If I start playing a video (usually on facebook, just now it also crashed when I was starting a youtube video) on my second screen while Iā€™m on the hero select or in the matchmaking screen, in about 50% my game will crash. Actually my entire PC will crash. I have to force reboot it.

I do not have this issue in ANY other game or application. No matter what I do, if I push my GPU and CPU to the limit through benchmarks or rendering, never ever has my PC crashed!

My drivers are up to date. Same goes for Win10 Pro.
This issue started when I changed my GPU to a RTX2070. With my old 980Ti there are no problems.

And sure you might say: ā€œjust donā€™t tab out of the gameā€, but itā€™s annoyingly boring sitting there watching the wheel spin while itā€™s searching for a match - which is nowadays even taking even longer since Iā€™ve lost all this SR.

Iā€™m playing really bad and I might not belong to diamond or higher at the moment. But Iā€™m getting close to gold ffsā€¦ This is BS!

Oh yeah, by the way, what I just found in the eventlog:
Application Overwatch.exe has been blocked from accessing Graphics hardware.
(but this is actually the first time I notice a message like this)