Nvidia RTX 3090 owners may want to be careful when playing Amazon's New World MMO. Although the card can make the game look absolutely gorgeous, there are reports from several RTX 3090 owners that the game forces the card to run so hard that they've been bricked after just a short segment of gameplay. To counter this issue, Amazon has announced plans to cap frame rates for RTX 3090 owners if they want, which should alleviate the issue, but it's not one that should be there in the first place.
Please read this message regarding recent concerns with graphics cards hardware. pic.twitter.com/L1gNeBBPQS
— New World (@playnewworld) July 21, 2021
The issue appears to happen relatively quickly after starting the game, with some reporting that within as little as 15 minutes their card would spin up to 100% with the fans cranked to maximum, and then find that the card just won't start up again. It's not clear exactly what's breaking, but it seems that the game pushes the card so hard that one of its important components gives up the ghost and leaves the card completely unusable.
Considering the card is upwards of $1,500 and some have paid up to $3,000 for it in recent months, that's a real tragedy.
Amazon's response should temporarily fix the issue, but it seems likely that this is more of a hardware problem than a software one. If high frame rates can cause a graphics card to die, that seems like a failure of the manufacturing process. Especially in a high-end card where high frame rates are to be expected.
Nvidia has yet to comment.