It's highly unlikely you are damaging the card in any way by simply playing games with it. All modern GPUs and CPUs have a built in mechanism to throttle themselves if they start to overheat. That is what it means when you hear the term "thermal throttling". Essentially the Hardware is limiting or slowing down its performance so it doesn't overheat. This could be because you are pushing it too hard OR it could be because of other issues (i.e. too little or no thermal paste). Long story short here though is that it is very unlikely you are causing harm to your video card because IF you were pushing it to its limits, it would start to slow itself down so it wouldn't run too hot and cause permanent damage. BTW D2R is wayyyyyyyy wayyyyyyyyyy below the limits of a 4090 so I highly doubt you are taxing that card even lightly.
You can install some software that will provide you readings of the onboard sensors on your Graphics card to see IF something is overheating (i.e. the vRAM or the GPU itself). When I used to build a lot of PCs and tinker with overclocking, I think HWinfo was the tool I used.
Honestly though, it just sounds like you received some bad hardware. I would reach out to Zotac for an RMA so you can get a replacement card. Sounds like you may have bought a pre-built, which (I believe) should come with the standard warranty for all its components.
Something else you can also try (which they may ask you if they want you to troubleshoot before returning the card) is to use a different graphics card (if you have one) and see if that also shows the same instability. If it does not then it's a higher chance that their card is the issue and not something else.
Good luck! Feel free to PM me with any other questions and hopefully I can help.
Thanks a lot for the info, really appreciate it!!
I'm running some additional tests right now to see if anything pops up, though honestly not feeling hopeful that games will run properly even if tests show up fine.
My PC wasn't a prebuilt, I picked all the parts separately and got the store to assembled, but yes there's warranty for all the components still.
I'll use another card to see if I'm still running into issues. And thank you, will definitely PM you if I run into a dead end again.
Do you load multi clients with d2r ?
also try -ns in the target line after -w , might be Sound related
Does it happen only with d2r ?
No, I only load one d2r. I'll try -ns and -w
My other games run fine, though I've primarily been playing D2R only so I'm not sure if running other games for a period will lead me to issues eventually.
What's been happening recently is after getting cards checked by both seller and zotac CS, D2R would run fine and I'd play it for a week or so and then the crashes would come back. Once the d2r crashes are back, running other games also result in crashes (even a graphically undemanding game like slay the spire 2).
This post was edited by Qudes on May 3 2026 02:30am