Looking for some help (more like hope)

Yesterday unboxed my christmas present to myself: custom-spec'ed Falcon Northwest rig to replace my 10-year-old home build. It runs smooth as butter and is built to last me another 10 years, but it won't run D2R for more than 5 minutes before crashing. I'm shocked and disappointed; this machine is probably an order of magnitude beefier than my old one, which handles D2R quite stably (even with fairly high vfx settings).

The specific issue seems to be the Environmental Detail setting. If it's anything other than "Low," high-density vfx sprites and assets will no longer be transparent. I wish I could get a screen grab before the client crashes to show what it looks like. A good example is the on-Death deluge at

Shenk the Overseer. As the

Catapult hits mount up, each individual effect gains an opaque frame, almost exactly like the drop label frames. Within about 15 seconds of that starting to happen, client will crash with no dump report. Sometimes I'll crash without that signal, but it's almost always in the same type of situation (high-density vfx, like the full trav council spawning hydras at once, or 2nd wave rezzing souls, and then lightning on top of everything else).

I believe it's the game not my machine. My dxdiag is clean, and there's virtually nothing on the drive other than Windows 11, Office 365, bnet, and Steam. The blues on the tech forums assure me Win11 is supported. And I know my card is fine; benchmarked on 3DMark at 15,108 (86th percentile).

Is anyone else running similar gear, and are you able to reassure me this can be fixed? It's got me down for sure.

My machine:

• Windows 11
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero
• 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (8 GB)
• 32 GB 5200mhz DDR5
• 1000W titanium-rated PSU
• GeForce Game Ready driver ver. 511.65 (rel. 2/1/2022)

If you haven't already, start going back to older NVidia drivers. Maybe a fresh Windows install even and don't install anything else, then test D2 and do one install at a time to see if you can figure out if there's a conflict.

Also good to remove any overclocking. I've seen that cause quite a few issues, and not needed for this game.

Could also be a specific setting, as you mentioned. Have you looked thru the windows event logs or game logs to see if there's more details as to why it's crashing?

Thanks, it's reasonable advice. I don't want to try general troubleshooting specifically because I paid the pros to hand-tune everything, and I would definitely undo a lot of that work if I started messing around. My last computer (home-built) had some occasional but very annoying voltage issues because I don't do this for a living, and I really don't want to go back to that. I was hoping maybe someone ran into this specific behavior and had some advice or a fix. I already posted to the D2R tech forum, but given the number of crash reports currently open, I don't have high hopes.

My MB does have an OC button, and I think they configured it, so I can try to disable any OC settings that way.

Played my usual mf circuit with "Environmental Detail" set to Low just to see if I could make it more than 5 minutes, and it worked. There was still one instant where I thought I was going to crash at wave 3. I managed to grab a screenie. The distortion isn't nearly as pronounced as it is when I crash, but maybe someone will recognize it. First in the normal color (pure screenshot), then colorized to highlight the odd framing effect around the vfx. In real time these frames fade in and out at the same temperature/pace as the vfx, kind of like a pixel wall:

have you tried tech support in blizaard?
there could be also a conflict between the setup/configuration of your card. make sure it's not enforcing anything, and its always allowing the application to maniplulate the setting of a certain aspect. gl!

Brand new pc? have you tried to make it update all windows 11 packs ?

had somewhat similar issue after reinstalling windows 10, and after i updated a shitload of updates that wasnt updating automatically, it have run fine since, i know win11 probably is more up to date..

Did you try tweaking 3D settings in your NVIDIA Control Panel? I'd start here, maybe some tech related to your recent graphic card isn't playing well with D2R.

I had a bunch of issues with games crashing with my 3080 and then my whole pc started freezing. They ended up replacing the gpu and all is well in paradise again.

I'm leaning toward bad Memory or bad GPU or screwed up windows/drivers....

You said that it was a Christmas gift; is there a receipt available?

I wouldn't even mess with software if I could exchange it for another one really quickly...

If you cant return it, wipe the hard drive clean and start over. Install all the latest drivers and windows updates like someone else already said...

"fine tuned by the pros" ????

Bullshit, you are a pro. Anyone posting to this forum and playing D2 for 20 years is already a pro. These so called professionals aren't doing anything magical that you cant do on your own.

cristobal03 wrote: 2 years ago

Thanks, it's reasonable advice. I don't want to try general troubleshooting specifically because I paid the pros to hand-tune everything, and I would definitely undo a lot of that work if I started messing around. My last computer (home-built) had some occasional but very annoying voltage issues because I don't do this for a living, and I really don't want to go back to that. I was hoping maybe someone ran into this specific behavior and had some advice or a fix. I already posted to the D2R tech forum, but given the number of crash reports currently open, I don't have high hopes.

If you don't want to try troubleshooting, then send it back and get a replacement (either GPU or whole computer). If you do want to try, you may undo work, but it's broken, so it shouldn't matter if you undo it, and it could save you shipping/warranty/refund headaches. As for voltage issues, I've built several computers and never have to mess with that. Just leave it default, or use a recommended profile. Only thing I've had to consistently change was timings on RAM in BIOS so that it would use the correct speed. Pretty low risk there.

The best troubleshooting step is to go back to older NVIDIA driver versions. Go as far back as your gfx card will support, and see if same issue. If it is, then most likely hardware problem.

Also double check to see if any BIOS updates for your motherboard. That could be outdated and cause a lot of issues if so.

annoynimous wrote: 2 years ago

this has been discussed in official forums

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... ts/6457/31

Key culprit being... Windows 11 and driver issue.

if I were you... screw that W11 and pop back W10.

no reason to get W11 as it is possibly the the Vista of Windows.

if that's not a choice, try installing Nvidia 470.xx driver and hope for the best.

OMG this is the most helpful thing, I scoured the tech forums but didn't see this. Will try a driver rollback, actually did an upgrade because of a different issue that was probably an unrelated problem. Will report back.

Mods, please give annoynimous the answer flag plus ALL THE LIKES. Rolling back to NVIDIA Game Ready 472.12 fixed all the issues.

I didn't try that at first because my rig shipped with 472.12, and blizz TS told me to update it due to a different issue that was more about the D2R game client allowing configuration of antialiasing features, so the game kept crashing at title (before the "Press any key" screen; a ton of people reporting this problem now on the forums).

ANYWAY, since the driver upgrade and clean install fixed that, I didn't want to do a rollback. Until I saw the thread annoynimous linked and realized the first problem was unrelated.

So. Many. Likes. You saved the day, [sir or madam].

Just wanna say, that was very first thing I suggested in my first post, and then I suggested it again in my 2nd reply. 9 out of 10 times it's the graphic drivers. But it's ok, no thanks needed...

Just another day as an unrecognized IT hero ;P

Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago

Just wanna say, that was very first thing I suggested in my first post. 9 out of 10 times it's the graphic drivers. But it's ok, no thanks needed...

cristobal03 wrote: 2 years ago

Thanks, it's reasonable advice. I don't want to try general troubleshooting specifically because I paid the pros to hand-tune everything, and I would definitely undo a lot of that work if I started messing around. My last computer (home-built) had some occasional but very annoying voltage issues because I don't do this for a living, and I really don't want to go back to that. I was hoping maybe someone ran into this specific behavior and had some advice or a fix.

Credit all around, then. I very much appreciate the link to the blizz TS thread that referenced the specific driver to roll to.

Doh! I take that back, you did thank me there. Thanks for pointing out your thanks!! Sorry I missed that. Glad your new computer is running smooth now

No worries and it's a good point that everyone chimed in. I was just overjoyed with that link.

Now I can kill all the things in peace!