Amazon Patches New World to Solve "Dying RTX 3090" Dilemma

By Aaron Klotz
published

But the damage has been done for the game's early testers.

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

According to a Tweet from Amazon's New World dev team, New World will be receiving a patch today that will cap FPS in the menu screen to prevent more RTX 3090's from dying due to "overutilization" of the GPU.

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This whole situation started yesterday when Amazon's new MMO, New World, went into its open beta phase, inviting more players to test the game. As new players began running the game, some users with RTX 3090's reported that their cards were dying from leaving the game running inside the menu screen.

As it turns out, the issue stemmed from the game's menu system not having a frame rate limiter, and allowing the GPUs to run at thousands upon thousands of frames per second. It's likely that the game was somehow "over-utilizing" the graphics card in a way that overloaded the VRM and power delivery system.

This new patch for New World will enforce a frame rate cap in the menu system that will reduce the graphics card's workload, which should help prevent further RTX 3090 deaths.

We still aren't completely aware of how the game can kill an RTX 3090 simply by running at thousands of frames per second. There are many other games that are capable of running at thousands of FPS in the menu without causing GPU damage at all.

It seems like the developers are puzzled too. "We have seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090's, either in the beta or during our many months of alpha testing," they wrote in their tweet addressing the hardware failures.

At least for now, New World's developers seem to have the situation under control with the new frame rate limiter, which they hope will prevent further RTX 3090 deaths.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

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

Topics
GPUs
Video Games
35 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gargoylenest
    shouldnt it be Nvidia's job to work solving this issue?
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    gargoylenest said:
    shouldnt it be Nvidia's job to work solving this issue?
    I was going to say, lol.

    It's a friggen' $1500+ USD card. How the hell can it die so easily from this? I'm sure that this is not the only game which doesn't cap the menu framerate.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    Amazon should be footing the bill since it's their game that killed these GPU's and I suspect that's Nvidia will do. They will have Amazon foot the bill for the replacements.
    Reply
  • punkncat
    It would seem to me as an outsider looking in, that if Amazon released a patch, that they were aware of some manner of issue in the code/execution from the start?

    There was a bit of a joke passed around in another thread about this concerning them doing some 'sneaky mining' in the background. Sure seems a bit more probable now, eh?
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Heat_Fan89 said:
    Amazon should be footing the bill since it's their game that killed these GPU's and I suspect that's Nvidia will do. They will have Amazon foot the bill for the replacements.
    There's no legal background for that, sadly for 3090 owners. The game was just using an API that the cards support. It's up to nVidia to know how to protect the hardware and the AIB's.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • warezme
    I read this was related to only EVGA FTW 3090 series of cards so it may have something to do with the manufacturer as well perhaps not having enough VRM controls in place.
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    Yuka said:
    There's no legal background for that, sadly for 3090 owners. The game was just using an API that the cards support. It's up to nVidia to know how to protect the hardware and the AIB's.

    Regards.
    There doesn't need to be a legal background. There's always a first time for everything. The fact of the matter is, a certain GPU failed running a particular application. In this case it was an Amazon game. At first Amazon brushed it aside then they offered a temporary solution followed by releasing a patch to fix it.

    (I know, here comes the dreaded car analogy) It's like if I bought a new car and raced the engine close to or past the redline in neutral. Something eventually failed and I then want the car company to fix it under warranty. I caused the problem but I want someone else to foot the bill. It's Amazon's application that was the cause of the problem. I would not be surprised if the beancounters at Nvidia will be giving Amazon their bill for those damaged GPU's.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Heat_Fan89 said:
    There doesn't need to be a legal background. There's always a first time for everything. The fact of the matter is, a certain GPU failed running a particular application. In this case it was an Amazon game. At first Amazon brushed it aside then they offered a temporary solution followed by releasing a patch to fix it.

    (I know, here comes the dreaded car analogy) It's like if I bought a new car and raced the engine close to or past the redline in neutral. Something eventually failed and I then want the car company to fix it under warranty. I caused the problem but I want someone else to foot the bill. It's Amazon's application that was the cause of the problem. I would not be surprised if the beancounters at Nvidia will be giving Amazon their bill for those damaged GPU's.
    It's not the first time nVidia cards self-combust, so not quite, haha.

    Also, your analogy is a bit off, but I can't think of a better one... This is like using your car on the street and then trying to go over the speed limit a bit, it breaks the engine block completely. You were just going on a different street instead of the usual one when it happened.

    Amazon has nothing here to be blamed about, seriously. I'm not even trying to be an Amazon apologist. EVGA and nVidia should foot the bill for those cards. Period. Fortunately, most of those should be within warranty period still.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    Heat_Fan89 said:
    There doesn't need to be a legal background. There's always a first time for everything. The fact of the matter is, a certain GPU failed running a particular application. In this case it was an Amazon game. At first Amazon brushed it aside then they offered a temporary solution followed by releasing a patch to fix it.

    (I know, here comes the dreaded car analogy) It's like if I bought a new car and raced the engine close to or past the redline in neutral. Something eventually failed and I then want the car company to fix it under warranty. I caused the problem but I want someone else to foot the bill. It's Amazon's application that was the cause of the problem. I would not be surprised if the beancounters at Nvidia will be giving Amazon their bill for those damaged GPU's.
    If there were hundreds of dead GPUs, maybe Nvidia (more likely EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, or whoever the card vendor was) would do that. If it's a few dozen or less? It's not worth the trouble and loss of goodwill. Yes, that's potentially tens of thousands of dollars. Which is still nothing compared to all the support staff and other employees that work at any moderately sized graphics card company. It sounds like EVGA's factory overclocked cards may have been more susceptible than other vendors' 3090 cards as well, which could mean it's not directly Nvidia's fault.
    Reply
  • duffer9999
    Yuka said:
    It's not the first time nVidia cards self-combust, so not quite, haha.

    Also, your analogy is a bit off, but I can't think of a better one... This is like using your car on the street and then trying to go over the speed limit a bit, it breaks the engine block completely. You were just going on a different street instead of the usual one when it happened.

    Amazon has nothing here to be blamed about, seriously. I'm not even trying to be an Amazon apologist. EVGA and nVidia should foot the bill for those cards. Period. Fortunately, most of those should be within warranty period still.

    Regards.

    Here's a better car analogy:

    If you drive your car on the autobahn with no speed limit (the game) and you blow up your cars engine (the card) its you own damn fault. Sorry Nvidia should have speed limiters if its going to blow up their cards.
    Reply