EVGA Explains Why New World Beta Bricked Some Video Cards

A few months ago, some New World beta testers reported that the game was bricking their very pricy video cards. It was a limited issue, only affecting a few people and their rigs, but it was enough to send ripples of panic throughout the game's nascent community.

Now EVGA has determined what caused their GeForce RTX 3090 cards to fail during the game's menu screens. PC World reports that analysis of about two dozen cards returned to the manufacturer show evidence of "poor worksmanship" on some of the cards' soldering. EVGA said that the failures were confined to that single make of cards, and it shipped replacements to the affected customers.

The early build of New World didn't include a frame-rate limiter on menu or loading screens, which caused the cards to shift into overdrive. As PC World put it: "That could cause a GPU to suddenly go from an in-game frame rate of 100 fps to roaring along at 800 fps. It’s akin to driving a car at full throttle going up hill and accidentally putting the car into neutral. If you don't lift your foot, the engine revs into its redline."

In addition to Amazon's adding a frame-rate limiter in New World, EVGA has issued an update to show users that the 3090's fan controller is working properly, as it was initially blamed for the malfunction.