Amazon Games' New World MMO is apparently still sending Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) graphics cards to the GPU graveyard. It's a shame since Ampere GPUs rank among the best graphics cards, and they're also expensive and incredibly hard to come by in this day and age.
The open beta for New World certainly debuted with a bang. GeForce RTX 3090 owners, who got early access to the game, saw their investments die before their eyes when playing the game. The GeForce RTX 3090 has a $1,499 MSRP, but due to the graphics card shortage, GPU prices on the flagship Ampere SKU typically reach over $2,500.
The issue seemed to be an isolated one that affected EVGA's GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra Gaming more than other cards. The graphics card manufacturer investigated the matter and discovered that poor soldering was the reason some cards prematurely bit the dust. A total of 24 units fell victim to the disaster, which is less than 1% of all the (RTX 3090, we think) graphics cards that have been sold, according to EVGA.
The open beta didn't have a frame rate limiter in the game's menu, which caused graphics cards to render the menu at insanely high framerates and eventually fry themselves. Amazon Games implemented a limiter to cap the frame rate in the game's menu system. However, it appears that the problem hasn't been solved as there are new reports of graphics card deaths.
PowerGPU, a custom PC builder, tweeted out yesterday that the company had reportedly received emails from customers that their graphics cards ceased to function after playing New World. The system integrator didn't share which models or how many users were affected, though.
German publication WinFuture reported that its Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming also perished despite the framerate limiter in the game menu and enabling the same 60 FPS limit in Nvidia's GeForce driver. The news outlet reports that changing the graphics settings increased the load on the graphics card, and exiting New World resulted in a massive spike in fan speeds and a bricked RTX 3090 graphics card. The fans went full throttle at 100%, and the screen went black with the PC ultimately shutting down.
One Redditor apparently suffered the same fate as WinFuture with a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Eagle 12G. Other GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti owners have reported the same misfortune in the thread.
The problem with New World frying Nvidia's Ampere graphics cards isn't specific to the GeForce RTX 3090. In fact, it isn't exclusive to EVGA models, either, as the latest reports from Gigabyte owners come pouring in. It's unlikely that the Gigabyte models are also affected by poor soldering, unless you believe in coincidences, which suggests that the root cause may be something else. If you own an RTX 30-series graphics card, you may want to hold off trying to enter the queues for New World and wait for a hopefully permanent solution to the GPU killing problem.
