If you’re lucky enough to own an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, the most powerful and expensive graphics card in the Nvidia GeForce GTX 30 series, you might want to stay away from Amazon’s New World MMO. A number of users on Reddit who own GeForce RTX 3090 have reported that the introduction of the closed beta of New Worlds has not only crashed their graphics card but possibly even the $1499 component. The closed beta for Amazon New World went live today, and while many players enjoy the game, there are some players whose systems are equipped with RTX 3090 graphics cards and whose save games were ruined while playing the upcoming MMORPG.
A report on the Amazon New World subreddit suggests that trying to start the game with an RTX 3090 caused the card to fry under the influence of force, and contacted the manufacturer for a refund or replacement. Several reactions seem to confirm that this is not an isolated problem, and further reports of interference with the RTX 3090 while playing New World seem to be affecting EVGA’s maps. Twitter is littering with reports that the problems are due to power surges and overheating that cause unlimited frame rates and game menus. It seems that the brick incidents occur only on RTX3090 cards, but players with other brands of the card also report extreme overheating and dangerous power consumption.
Players using RTX 3080 have noticed that while their cards are not masonry, they still generate extreme heat. This seems to happen in beta, causing cards to overheat and eventually cause power surges. New games have to fail-safes built into modern graphics cards that can step in when voltages and temperatures are extreme enough to cause permanent damage.
There are a number of fail-safes incorporated into your hardware to keep it from overheating or drawing more power than it can handle but this is not safe in New World because the game can overheat the GPU and cause power spikes everywhere. The general consensus seems to be that it is the uncapped frame rate and menu screens that upset the graphics icon by extracting too much juice from its VRM and frying it. The considerable stress experienced by the graphics card can eventually kill it.
While some players blame the closed beta of New Worlds for ruining their GPUs, others suspect that the problem may lie with the hardware itself. A number of systems in the New World were tuned during one of the last closed beta tests before the official release in late August, and based on feedback from one, Amazon is expected to get to grips with the problem.
An Amazon customer service representative confirmed the issue earlier today with the 100% GPU use of the Nvidia RTX 3090 Series in a forum post. Twitch streamer Gladd tweeted about the kill today, linking to a thread on the official New Worlds forums, and several other players also reported on it.
The representative offered two solutions and suggested that RTX 3090 users disable or override their card driver settings in order to limit their FPS to 60 in the visual settings and restart the New World Game Client. The statement also encouraged beta participants to limit the maximum FPS number of games in the client’s visual settings to 60. Amazon Customer Service recommended that the driver settings be turned off or revoked, but the only specific instructions were to set the maximum frame rate in NVIDIA Control Panel to its default state based on the options to limit the frame rate of the game.
In a statement distributed on Wednesday, Amazon Games said it had seen no evidence of widespread problems with 3090 since the patch was released. New World has seen some evidence of the problem since it was in beta, but the game is still many months away from alpha testing.
Amazon says reported hardware faults makeup only a fraction of the overall player base and are not widespread. The developers have released patches to limit frame rates and menus. This means that the argument that this is a hardware problem, not a game problem, is over. The open beta for Amazon-developed MMO New World began on July 20 and players have started reporting critical GPU issues on the subreddit and New World forums. Amazon also stated in the statement that “Hundreds of thousands of people played New World yesterday in the closed beta, with a total of over a million hours played. We are grateful for the support that New World received from players around the world and will listen to their feedback throughout the bet”.
