Amazon: Don't Blame New World for GPU Deaths, Blame Card Makers (Update)

Marketing image for Amazon's new world MMORPG
(Image credit: Amazon)

News outlet hardwareluxx has received an official statement from Amazon regarding GPU deaths surrounding its recently released MMO New World. Amazon says they have detected no game-breaking bugs in New World that would cause the game to kill RTX GPUs. Instead, it reiterates and confirms that it's a problem with GPU manufacturers and poor graphics card build quality.

This news was also confirmed by custom PC builder, PowerGPU, who told us it has only dealt with customers using older model EVGA GPUs that were dying from New World, including RTX 3090s, a couple of RTX 3080s, and a single 3080 Ti.

"In the last few days, we have received few reports from players who have had problems with their GeForce RTX cards. After extensive investigation, we were unable to identify any unusual behavior on the part of New World that could be the cause of these problems. EVGA has already confirmed errors in the production of some GeForce RTX cards. New World can be played safely. For players who have encountered a hardware failure, we recommend that you contact the manufacturer." —Amazon, via hardwareluxx.de

While some might say that of course Amazon would deny culpability, New World should not be blamed for all the GPU deaths despite what everyone might be telling you. EVGA has already confirmed that its first batch of RTX 3090 cards built a year ago had faulty solder joints, which caused the cards to die under the strain of New World — and if it wasn't New World, it would have been some other game or application.

(Image credit: EVGA)

We believe New World's game engine inadvertently stumbled upon some code sequence that allows certain Ampere cards to draw more power than they should. This would explain why only a handful of cards are dying from New World. If the problem was indeed from New World in general, then graphics cards would be dying left and right, including RTX 3070s and RTX 3060s, and Amazon would be able to replicate the issues.

There's also the fact that no gaming laptops have been confirmed KIA from New World either. Laptops of necessity tend to have better power regulation and don't push the limits as hard as factory overclocked desktop cards. There's also something to be said for any hardware design that allows the hardware to be killed by software. If the code can execute, the hardware should constrain any power or thermal loads so that nothing fails.

Frankly, believing Ampere graphics cards — particularly early models — are the main culprit isn't all that difficult. Let's not forget about the issues surrounding poscaps back when the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 were first released. Many Ampere cards that didn't have enough MLCCs were crashing to desktop thanks to power filtering issues from poscaps. This forced Nvidia to create a new driver update that reduced GPU boost frequencies to stop the graphics cards from crashing while gaming. Future models came out with improved power circuitry, but some of those first run cards are still out in the wild.

What we currently don't know is what other models of RTX 3090s and RTX 3080s met with similar manufacturing defects. We've seen mention of a couple of Gigabyte RTX 3090s cards dying (while playing New World), and according to JayzTwoCents, one Zotac 3090 caught fire while playing the game. PowerGPU, a system builder, also says a single RTX 3080 Ti died, but that's it. All other brands, including MSI, don't seem to have any dead cards at all.

There are supposedly some other cards, including RTX 3080 Ti and RX 6000-series GPUs, that have died from New World. However, that could just be the usual small percentage of cards that inevitably die for one reason or another. Make a million graphics cards and there will always be a few that fail within the first year or two, even under relatively tame use. Basically, correlation doesn't equal causation, and there doesn't appear to be a continued spate of GPU failures while playing New World.

If one manufacturer does end up with unusually high numbers of GPU failures, it will need to take care of its customers. Thankfully, it appears more recent EVGA cards no longer have soldering issues. If you do have a GPU fail while playing New World, though, please reach out to us and we'll continue to follow the story. But for now, it looks like New World isn't the source of the GPU failures but merely a catalyst in pushing a small subset of flaky hardware to the breaking point.

Update, October 8, 2:20 p.m. ET: Buildzoid from the YouTube channel Actually Hardcore Overclocking, has a Gigabyte RTX 3090 Vision that died while running New World and found the death was from a faulty power stage. He disconnected the bad power stage and the card became operational again.

He doesn’t know if the power stage was faulty, or if there is some other defect with the card. Either way, it further confirms that the card is at fault and not New World. Buildzoid thinks it could be a defect with the 3090 design because most graphics cards today use the same power stages that the Gigabyte RTX 3090 Vision uses.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • hotaru.hino
    Which makes sense. Software should be able to do whatever the heck it wants to on hardware and if hardware can't cope, it's bad hardware design.
    Reply
  • bollwerk
    There are some bugs with the game client regarding graphics and resolutions, but I agree that shouldn't kill cards. Hardware should be designed in a way to protect itself, and cards generally are. If cards are dying, then it's definitely faulty card design.
    Reply
  • Dr3ams
    Amazon should pay attention to what users are really saying before pointing fingers.

    Watch this...6A0sLVgJ7qU
    Reply
  • Abion47
    Strong disagree. Even if New World is revealing manufacturing defects in certain cards, the fact remains that these issues are largely exclusive to New World - no other game, not even demanding ones, cause the GPU to run so hard. While the game is running, you can watch your GPU's power usage regularly spike to 15-20% above its set limits, and that kind of cycle for an extended period of time will wear down the hardware (just like how turning a light bulb on and off will cause it to wear out faster than just leaving it on). Even cards that don't get bricked outright will still see their lifespans reduced as a result of this aggressive repeated power spiking.

    Anecdotally, the only time I've ever heard my computer's fans ramp up so hard for so long as when playing New World is when I'm running extended benchmarks, and games should not be running like benchmarks. I've since enabled the 60 FPS cap, and now my computer runs much more in line with its usual behavior when playing other games. (I've got a Ryzen 9 5950X and an ASUS RTX 2080 Ti.)
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Abion47 said:
    Strong disagree. Even if New World is revealing manufacturing defects in certain cards, the fact remains that these issues are largely exclusive to New World - no other game, not even demanding ones, cause the GPU to run so hard. While the game is running, you can watch your GPU's power usage regularly spike to 15-20% above its set limits, and that kind of cycle for an extended period of time will wear down the hardware (just like how turning a light bulb on and off will cause it to wear out faster than just leaving it on). Even cards that don't get bricked outright will still see their lifespans reduced as a result of this aggressive repeated power spiking.

    Anecdotally, the only time I've ever heard my computer's fans ramp up so hard for so long as when playing New World is when I'm running extended benchmarks, and games should not be running like benchmarks. I've since enabled the 60 FPS cap, and now my computer runs much more in line with its usual behavior when playing other games. (I've got a Ryzen 9 5950X and an ASUS RTX 2080 Ti.)
    But this isn't the fault of software. Software literally cannot cause power spikes because it's binary data being processed by the hardware. It's the hardware going "well, I can probably handle it" and decides to ramp up significantly until it realizes "oh shoot, maybe this wasn't a good idea."

    Otherwise Intel shouldn't have been the beatings it has for its hardware faults (mostly looking at the F00F bug). The obvious solution is just make sure software doesn't do those bad things so hardware manufacturers can continue finding ways to slack off on safely containing 300+ watts in a small package.
    Reply
  • TechyInAZ
    Your hardware shouldn't allow you to run 20% above the allowed power limit in the first place.
    Reply
  • Chrys
    The only reason the software should be blamed would be if they put in something to hack the hardware drivers. All game makers should be trying to optimize their games to get the best perceptible performance.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    "In the last few days, we have received few reports from players who have had problems with their GeForce RTX cards. After extensive investigation, we were unable to identify any unusual behavior on the part of New World that could be the cause of these problems. EVGA has already confirmed errors in the production of some GeForce RTX cards. New World can be played safely. For players who have encountered a hardware failure, we recommend that you contact the manufacturer." —Amazon

    this is legit BS trying to escape guilt.


    There is a video of proof that the game ignores actual gpu settigns and will upscale the game to a resolution you dont even have the settign enabled for by default.
    as well as ignoring power limits on gpu's settigns.

    Its both makers AND amazons fault as it took poor coding to reveal a flaw but the game is the culprit causing those flaws to be an issue.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    hotaru251 said:
    as well as ignoring power limits on gpu's settigns.
    Which would imply the game runs in Ring 0, and then we have bigger fish to fry because why would this game need to run in Ring 0.
    Reply
  • btmedic04
    and this kind of attitude from amazon is why i will not buy new world. software can and has killed hardware in the past. dont believe me? look up furmark killing gpus. I think that Jay is correct in saying that both amazon and card manufacturers are at fault here and instead of pointing fingers at each other, they need to come together and create a fix
    Reply