Amazon Games insists New World is safe to play despite reports of the MMO bricking some 3090 GPUs

Update: Amazon Games has issued a statement to GamesRadar+ in response to reports of select RTX 3090 graphics cards bricking while playing the beta for its MMO New World.

The publisher said: "Hundreds of thousands of people played in the New World Closed Beta yesterday, with millions of total hours played. We’ve received a few reports of players using high-performance graphics cards experiencing hardware failure when playing New World.

"New World makes standard DirectX calls as provided by the Windows API. We have seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090s, either in the beta or during our many months of alpha testing.

"The New World Closed Beta is safe to play. In order to further reassure players, we will implement a patch today that caps frames per second on our menu screen. We’re grateful for the support New World is receiving from players around the world, and will keep listening to their feedback throughout Beta and beyond."

This statement follows multiple claims that the game is bricking high-end 3090 graphics cards. In a forum post yesterday, July 21, a customer service representative said: "We believe this is related with driver settings and frame rate limiters," in a thread addressing "Nvidia RTX 3090 series & 100% GPU usage". 

They advised players to "disable the overrides in the driver settings", apply these updated settings, and restart New World to "prevent issues with the GPU's utilization." It also encouraged beta participants to cap the game's max FPS at 60 via the client's visual settings. Likewise, under the Nvidia control panel's 3D settings, ensure that New World "either shows 'Use Global Settings (Off)' or just 'Off.'"

This post didn't directly mention the EVGA FTW3 RTX 3090 GPU, which has seemingly been the most common model to be affected by critical errors according to posts from the New World community. However, the workarounds provided here suggest that the reports of GPU usage and power draw spiking during New World scenes with uncapped frame rates may be more than just anecdotal, although as per Amazon's statement, they insist that they have not seen "widespread issues" for 3090 cards.

Original story:

The newly opened beta for the Amazon-developed MMO New World is reportedly bricking select GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards. 

Shortly after the beta opened on July 20, players began to report critical GPU issues on the New World subreddit and forums. Curiously, the two most-read reports in these communities both reference EVGA's FTW3 model 3090. A widely shared report from Twitch streamer Gladd mentioned the same card, which suggests this isn't necessarily a blanket issue with the 3090 chipset, but a potential flaw in the EVGA FTW3. 

One Reddit user specifically mentioned that while their card performed fine, their partner's EVGA-brand model crashed repeatedly while playing New World, for instance. Another said that their EVGA FTW3 "ran fine for about 30 minutes" but that its "fans shot up to 100% right after black screen" and that their PC no longer recognizes their graphics card. 

You might think that New World, a game funded with Amazon's hefty wallet, is just so beautiful and advanced that even the strongest GPU chipset on the market buckles under its sheer graphical fidelity, but reports suggest that it's actually the game's menus that are frying these cards. Reddit user greyone78 said that their card died "after setting my graphics quality to medium and hitting save," while New World forum user Goatz said their card made "a loud pop" and seemingly shorted out during the initial loading screen. Other reports suggest that the default uncapped frame rate during these screens can cause certain graphics cards to overdraw power and overheat or short out as they race to hit a zillion theoretical frames, but that's just anecdotal for now. 

EVGA, Nvidia, and Amazon have yet to address this apparent hardware failure, but the New World support FAQ does note that the game can cause some graphics cards to abruptly jump to 99% load, putting more pressure on their components and power draw. This is nothing new to games, and ordinarily, the fail safes built into all modern graphics cards will kick in before voltage or temperature extremes can deal any lasting damage. However, it appears that the EVGA FTW3 may have a blind spot for whatever spike New World is causing. 

Here's how the RTX 3090 price is looking nowadays, and where to find an RTX 3090 PC if you're after a whole new system.