Game fries cards
AMAZON’S NEW MMORGP, NewWorld, has been delayed until the end of September, due to a rash of technical problems. The game had an extensive beta test, with up to 180,000 simultaneous players, before reports started coming in of graphics cards crashing, and burning. For some unknown reason, EVGA RTX 3090 cards overheated to the point of destruction, while AMD cards appear to be immune.
Thermal management is usually good these days; drivers won’t let software hammer cards to death, and there’s hardware and firmware on the cards to stop things from getting too toasty, so it’s unclear how much blame lies with the game. The launch of the RTX 3090 was marred by crashes, and the problem was traced to the type of capacitors fitted, but whatever the cause, it is clear that the game has highlighted a problem. Testers reported seeing a 100 percent load on their graphics cards during the loading screens though capping the frame rate reportedly cures it.
NewWorld is the first major outing for the Open 3D Engine, an open-source game engine jointly developed by Amazon Games, and the Linux Foundation, so a lot is riding on it. However, a delayed game is generally a better game—it can be hard to rise above initial disappointment, as Cyberpunk2077 shows. The developers have said they will use the extra time to polish the “overall experience”.