New World players are reporting overheated, dead 3090 GPUs

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.

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.

Ta, VGC.