It seems that owners of EVGA Geforce RTX 3090 FTW3, who have bricked their graphics cards while playing New World, will receive replacement cards soon.
According to YouTuber Jason “JayzTwoCents” Langevin, his contacts at EVGA said that shipment of replacement cards to their rightful owners has started. This follows the reports of some RTX 3090 users who killed their cards while playing the New World beta, released last week.
While this is good for people who reside in the U.S, it may not be so for those who live in other countries. Some have bad experiences when it comes to EVGA’s RMA process.
Although the developers of the game already implemented a patch that puts a frame rate cap on the menu screens, it seems the issue is far deeper.
What is the Issue?
According to an article, it appears that there is a problem in the hardware and software aspects, at least pertaining to EVGA’s RTX 3080 and 3090 GPUs.
Apparently, whenever the game goes beyond 60 frames per second, the GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra’s Fan #1 will run amok for a few seconds. How crazy is the ramp-up, you ask? Well, Fan #1 would go as high as 229,885 RPM! The higher the frame rates, the more violent the fan is. This may show how much heat is generated by the GPU.
Besides that, the other problem is that even setting the card’s fans manually to 50% won’t do anything.
Furthermore, trying multiple versions of vBIOSes didn’t change a thing. Even using the card’s semi-passive, normal, and OC modes didn’t contribute to protecting the GPU from the issue.
The article concluded that EVGA should take full responsibility and should not only replace the broken graphics cards but also issue a firmware update to fix the insane fan ramp-up in the current vBIOS versions.
It is also worth noting that this is a widespread issue, meaning that it not only affects New World but can also be replicated in other games like Anno 1800.
While it is admirable for EVGA to replace the broken cards, there is a need for a permanent fix. After all, graphics cards are hard to come by, especially with the global chip shortage as scalpers hoard the stocks, among many others.
So, what do you think? Should EVGA be given a pass after shipping the replacement cards sooner than later? Or should they still be held accountable for the seemingly deeper issue at play here?