New World is reportedly overheating and killing RTX 3090 graphics cards

A little too new, for now

The big closed beta for Amazon’s MMO New World just kicked off yesterday and things initially appeared to be going smoother than I’d expected. I started watching a few folks play, as I’d hoped to. Ed seems to have enjoyed it so far according to his New World preview. Since yesterday though, things have gotten a bit too hot to handle for some folks using RTX 3090 graphics cards. Players across several different forums are reporting overheating that’s led to GPU failure. Amazon are aware of the issue, and have started with some tips to help players avoid overheating.

Update: Amazon have now said that they have “seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090s” during alpha or beta testing but plan to release a frame capping patch today in order to reassure beta players.

Over on on the New World subreddit, the EVGA forums, and New World’s forums players are reporting issues with overheating GPUs. Specifially, many players using EVGA’s RTX 3090 are reporting non-operational cards after playing in New World’s beta.

“EVGA 3090 FTW3 – ran fine for about 30 mins > black screen game audio still going > fans shot up to 100% right after black screen > hard reset and now no video,” explains one player.

“Yup, FTW3 Ultra. Loud pop, monitors turned off, 100% fan spin – rebooted, red light over power connectors, done,” describes another.

“Booted up the game for the first time, I was on the Brightness calibration screen, and clicking Restore Defaults sent all my fans into overdrive, blasting off to Mars. Screen went black and video output wouldn’t come back. I hard reset, and the GPU doesn’t turn on anymore, except for the red light of death. Same card! EVGA 3090 FTW3,” from another 3090 user.

Although appearing less prone to unit failure so far, there are players with other vendors and models also reporting high temperatures on their GPUs.

New World’s developers are now aware of the issue, and have given some preliminary, if a bit scant, advice on keeping GPU utilization down:

1. Disable the overrides in the driver settings,

2. Make sure to press “APPLY”

3. Restart the game client. Also you can cap your FPS. This will help prevent issues with the GPU’s utilization. Go to Settings > Visuals > Max fps > Set this to 60, this should help to bring the utilization back down. Additionally, please be sure to check in your NVIDIA Control Panel under Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > Select New World, and check that Max Frame Rate either shows ‘Use Global Settings (Off) or just Off.

Until there’s a definitive explanation and clearer solution, it would seem best for any 3090 card owners out there to play it safe and not sail off to New World just yet. For those on different GPUs, making sure to limit your frame rate is probably a decent idea as well.

You can keep an eye on Amazon’s updates in their known issue thread.

Amazon have now announced they have plans to release a patch today that will cap frames per second in New World’s menus:

“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. “The New World Closed Beta is safe to play. In order to further reassure players, we will implement a patch today that caps frames per second on our menu screen. We’re grateful for the support New World is receiving from players around the world, and will keep listening to their feedback throughout Beta and beyond.”

Ta, VGC.

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