After a series of delays, Amazon Game Studios began the closed beta for their upcoming MMO New World. Despite the game’s fairly positive reception, an increasing number of players are reporting that the game is bricking their graphics cards.
The issue seems to mostly pertain to EVGA’s RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra graphics card, however some are reporting that a small assortment of GPUs have also been affected. The issue has now been brought up by multiple unhappy players, including Twitch streamer Gladd, who suggested users exercise caution before booting up the game:
In the forum thread shared by Gladd, various users described similar experiences, where their pricey GPUs would accelerate fan speeds and GPU utilisation to 100% before shutting down. When attempting to boot up the game after the shutdown, players reported their GPUs making a loud pop before shutting down, this time, for good.
One player, who goes by the username Goatz, revealed that this is the second 3090 they’ve lost, having experienced the same issue in the alpha.
“This is the 2nd 3090 FTW3 Ultra directly from EVGA to die while playing or attempting to play New World, my first one died during Alpha, but I was able to play that for a week or so before that happened.”
After a period of radio silence, an Amazon customer service rep acknowledged the issue, suggesting that driver settings and frame rate limiters might be at fault for the GPU hitting maximum utilisation. “This will help prevent issues with the GPU’s utilisation” the rep claimed.
Given that this is clearly not an isolated issue, it surely won’t be long before Amazon issues an official response to the problem, along with other solutions to prevent further reports of fried hardware.
For those affected by this critical error, your best bet will be to contact your GPU manufacturer and submit an RMA request to receive a replacement GPU.