Geforce RTX 3090 is reportedly destroyed by Amazon’s game New World

Amazon Games’ upcoming MMORPG New World has an ongoing beta session that seems to pose real problems for some users. On Twitter and in the game’s subforum on Reddit, several users report that the game “bricked” their graphics card and made it unusable. It’s also not just any graphics card, but Nvidia’s performance monster Geforce RTX 3090.

At present, it mainly looks to be a specific graphics card from partner manufacturer EVGA that is affected, more specifically Geforce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming. However, there are reports from a few users who have experienced the same thing with the Geforce RTX 3080 Ti or other Geforce RTX 3090 models.

Most users seem to lose their graphics cards in the game’s menus. One theory is that it may be because menus have no limit to the frame rate and thus render extremely many frames per second, causing the graphics cards to work at high speeds with high temperatures as a result, to the point that they break. This is not confirmed, but is somewhat strengthened by the fact that other users with other graphics cards report that they also experience that their graphics cards worked unevenly in menus and in the game lobby, with strange ups and downs in load and temperature.

What speaks against the theory is that other users report that their graphics card has also given up a bit into the game, despite its own software limitations of FPS. Instead, there are theories that the graphics card’s components for power supply cannot handle the load and that this is what causes the error. The proposal is then to lower the graphics card’s power budget instead. Other possible causes that are discussed include drivers.

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. –Talesperson för Amazon Games

In a statement to Windows Central, Amazon announces that an update is underway that sets a maximum ceiling for FPS in menus as well. They also point out that only a few seem to have problems and that during their tests they did not encounter any problems like this.

At the moment we are dealing with specific problems, if it is a problem really confirmed we will inform and inform you in our EVGA forums on our website. – Talesperson för EVGA

EVGA follows the same path and confirms that they have users with problems, but that they have not confirmed if this is an overall problem for all graphics cards of that model. They further refer to the fact that more information is presented in their support forum if it turns out to be a major problem.

Although graphics cards are destroyed when users play New World, it is probably not the game that is the real culprit in the drama. It is more likely that the graphics cards that were affected were defective from the beginning and that the game was rather a trigger. It is relatively uncommon for games or software that is not directly related to the hardware, like drivers, to cause such serious errors that the hardware is destroyed.

In EVGA’s support forum, most outraged users also write that this is not their first Geforce RTX 3090 from the FTW series to stop working. This is not the first time EVGA’s FTW series has ended up in windy weather, they had heat problems in 2016 with their FTW-branded Geforce GTX 1080 and Geforce GTX 1070.

Before confirming the cause of the problem, users with the most affected model are advised to refrain from playing New World.

Are you participating in the beta test of New World and if so, have you been affected?