Update 07/21: Although Amazon says that the New World closed beta has not caused any hardware failures, an Amazon spokesperson told IGN that it will roll out a new patch today in response to reports of some RTX 3090 cards getting bricked:
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.
The original story continues below.
Multiple reports have emerged that the closed beta for Amazon’s MMO New World is reportedly killing Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards.
Reports first came to the surface via the New World subreddit, where the user ‘greyone78’ posted that their EVGA RTX 3090 RTW3 Ultra graphics card was bricked after adjusting their graphics quality in New World. After saving the new graphical setting, the GPU seized up, according to greyone78 who previously said that they were playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the Ultra settings with the same card before it died.
Greyone78 was not the only one to see their EVGA RTX 3090 graphics card get bricked; during the alpha test earlier this year, a user by the name of Goatz went to the New World official forums reporting that their EVGA RTX 3090 was bricked when playing the alpha test. Unfortunately, Goatz’s new GPU met a similar fate as their card bricked once again during the New World closed beta.
Surfing through the New World official forums, other users shared similar horror stories that their EVGA RTX 3090 GPU have died when plying the closed beta. Some users are reporting similar issues, but it appears EVGA’s RTX 3090 is the only card reportedly being bricked by the New World closed beta. Though I did notice one user with a Gigabyte RTX 3090 report that their GPU was allegedly bricked also.
IGN has reached out to Amazon Game Studios and EVGA for comment, but neither company has responded yet.
While it’s never great when graphics cards get bricked when using, the issue is particularly concerning as the RTX 3090, like other GPUs in the RTX 30 series have been in high demand and short supply and are some of the most difficult high-ticket items to purchase right now due to the ongoing chip shortage.
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
