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Amazon’s New World MMO turns $1,800 graphics cards into bricks

Jul 21, 2021

Reading time: 2 min

A glitch in Amazon’s new MMORPG, New World, is destroying the most expensive graphics card on the market.

Gamers with EVGA-tuned Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards are reporting total component failures after attempting to play the game. Reported triggers include confirming settings changes and loading into the game for the first time. Other graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD are unaffected by these issues. Additionally, only EVGA versions of the 3090 seem to get destroyed by New World.

ATTENTION:

Playing the New World beta on my EVGA 3090 has fried my graphics card completely. There are many accounts of this same thing happening with the same card with the same game.@TEAMEVGA @playnewworld @EVGA_JacobF

I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to others

— Gladd (@Gladd) July 21, 2021

It’s not exactly clear why New World turns extremely pricy graphics cards into paperweights. Players with different Nvidia or AMD GPUS have reported immediate maximum fan speed, extreme stuttering, and other performance issues, but nothing nearly as catastrophic as the EVGA 3090.

Graphics cards are in extremely high demand but very short supply due to a combination of trade tariffs, rare earth metal shortages, logistical issues, and more. EVGA’s suggested sale price for their RTX 3090 FTW3 ULTRA is $1,889.99 and the card is still currently out of stock. EVGA has not publicly commented on the phenomenon, though they will probably accept RMA requests from affected users. This incident unfortunately coincides with the company’s 22nd anniversary.

BTW New world fried my Evga ftw3 3090 I have another 3090 that’s a icx version played for 15 hours and it’s not dead. Anyone know if it’s exclusive to the FTW3?

— ????KingRichard???? (@KingRichard) July 21, 2021

Requests for comment were made to set to the developer of New World, but no response had come at time of publication.

How to play the New World closed beta with an RTX 3090

While the exact cause of the crashes isn’t exactly clear, a few possible solutions have been found by tech-savvy gamers. Custom PC manufacturer PowerGPU recommends that 3090 users cap their framerates down to 60. It’s disappointing to have to limit such a powerful card locked to the industry minimum, but the alternative $2,000 GPU meltdown is too scary to ignore.

Breaking: For people playing New World please cap your FPS.

This will help prevent any issues that people have been having with their GPU’s being fried.

Go to Settings > Visuals > Max fps > Set this to 60, this will bring the utilization back down. pic.twitter.com/mXGcyixFgi

— PowerGPU® (@PowerGPU) July 21, 2021

For non-EVGA RTX 3090 users, New World is perfectly safe to play with no common issues. For those with EVGA hardware, precautions need to be taken or the game needs to be avoided entirely. It might be best for games with EVGA RTX 3090-powered systems to just hold off on the colonial-era MMORPG for now. The New World closed beta test will conclude on August 2.