Amazon New World RTX 3090 bricking nightmare: Who's affected, why it's happening, and what to do

What you need to know

• New World is Amazon's upcoming MMORPG, currently in beta.
• It's been reported as overheating and bricking EVGA RTX 3090s.
• Users with other cards do not seem to be affected as severely.

Amazon's New World MMORPG is now in beta, and users are playing it in droves — at least, when the game lets them. Many RTX 3090 users have experienced their graphics cards overheating, crashing, and even dying as a result of attempting to play New World. Here's what we know so far about who's affected by the card-killing issue.

To preface, NVIDIA, Amazon, MSI, GIGABYTE, and ASUS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. An EVGA representative provided the following comment to Windows Central: "At the moment we are dealing with specific problems, if it is a problem really confirmed we will inform and inform you in our EVGA forums on our website." On those forums, there are multiple threads filled with people warning others not to play the game if they have an EVGA RTX 3090.

Similarly, over on Reddit, numerous threads are circulating regarding RTX 3090s killed by New World. In one such thread, /u/greyone78 discussed their dead EVGA RTX 3090. Many commenters also shared stories of their now-deceased EVGA RTX 3090s. Reports of overheating, hard crashing, and card failure run rampant through the New World subreddit.

However, other cards don't seem to be nearly as affected as that single EVGA model. A handful of people are citing similar issues with their EVGA RTX 3080s, but the more isolated reports aren't limited to that particular company's models. One person mentioned their Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 64 having serious issues with the game.

How to avoid a dead GPU

Though there is a common theme of people mentioning that New World is pushing their PCs and GPUs to unusually high temperatures regardless of the brand of their components, the only people suffering dangerously consistent failure rates seem to be EVGA RTX 3090 owners. And even that doomsday scenario may be avoidable if you're an owner of the card in question and still want to risk playing New World.

The quick fix for Amazon New World's GPU-killing fiasco is simple: Limit your in-game FPS to 60. There's a bit more to it, as you can read about in our linked coverage, but that's the short version. It seems New World has an issue with limiting FPS, allowing EVGA RTX 3090s to boost frames to the moon and burn themselves out in the process.

It's a strange twist of fate for those with one of the absolute best graphics cards on the market, who are now suffering a fate that those with, say, an RTX 3060 Ti aren't having to worry about.

New World is set to launch on August 31 for Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs. You can pre-order it now or wait patiently to see if the full release build of the game kills graphics cards as the beta has.

This story is developing and will be updated as new information becomes available.

Update July 21, 2021 at 5:25 p.m. ET: An Amazon Games spokesperson provided a statement to Windows Central, which includes mention of an incoming patch.

"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."