This seems to mainly impact RTX 3090 cards made by EVGA.

Update 2 (8:03PM ET on July 21, 2021): JayzTwoCents has tweeted out that he has received reports of 6900 XT and 6800 cards from AMD also encountering issues where they have died while playing New World.

These two card models are the two most powerful cards currently available on the market from AMD.

This does seem to indicate that it's not limited to Nvidia hardware. We'll be sure to update this as new reports come in.


Update (7:45PM ET on July 21, 2021): The official New World Twitter account has issued an official statement about the possibility that their game is directly causing these hardware issues. Through a statement, released on Twitter, Amazon Games says that their game "makes standard DirectX calls as provided by the Windows API." They continue on to say that they have "seen no indication of widespread issues with 3090s, either in the beta or during (their) many months of alpha testing."

They continue on to assert that the closed beta for New World is "safe to play." They do seem to concede that the lack of a framerate limit on the main menu is an issue that needs addressing. As such, they are deploying a patch that will cap the framerate on the main menu.

It looks like the ball might be in EVGA's court or Nvidia's court at this point.


Original: The closed beta for Amazon Games' New World MMO just kicked off yesterday. Though it's had its fair share of issues here and there, none are as bad as the possibility that the game may be responsible for bricking new Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards.

A number of reports from players started to appear on the New World subreddit yesterday. They say that playing the game resulted in their GPU just up and dying. This could happen before encountering the main menu or after some random amount of time actually playing the game.

The common thread amongst those reporting on this issue is the fact that they all had Nvidia RTX 3090 cards manufactured by EVGA. While the cards outright dying are limited to EVGA, others with 3090 cards from other manufacturers have noticed "problems with overheating and dangerous power spikes."

This issue was first noticed by Windows Central, but has since been picked up by a number of additional tech focused outlets including JayzTwoCents and Tom's Guide. The EVGA forums have also been hit by players reporting on the issue with their cards.

Now, there are some things to keep in mind here: This may not impact all EVGA made 3090 cards. It may also impact other cards that aren't 3090s, as some are reporting issues with their 3080s and even 3080 Ti cards.

If you are super concerned, the safest bet right now is to avoid playing New World until a cause is discovered.

As far as EVGA is concerned, they have issued a statement on the matter to Windows Central.

On the flip side of the coin, an Amazon Games rep at least acknowledged that the game could cause 100% GPU usage. They seem to place the blame on driver settings and not having a framerate limit in place. This may be useful for everyone since Amazon Games does not impose a framerate limit on the main menu, which they should absolutely address in a future patch. The issue here is that even if none of these framerate limits were in place, a GPU shouldn't just up and die like this, especially in cases where many users never even made it to the main menu before their cards died.

This entire issue was really hit with a spotlight yesterday when big Twitch streamer Gladd. You can see the moment his GPU died as it happened while he was streaming the game yesterday.