Legendary Overclocker KINGPIN Leaves EVGA and Joins PNY to Develop Next-Generation GPUs for Extreme OC

[Jism]

Kingpin was always about making sure that the boards had exactly what they needed to be the best without bean counters coming in and demanding lower quailty parts/lower numbers of phases etc be used to meet a price point.

So they were always pricy, but they offered the best of the best that class of card could offer with only the silicon lottery being the only thing he couldnt control.

I could honestly imagine that the Kingpin 4090 would have been a 2 slot AIO card from the start AND 2 power connecters coming out in the normal location and not the top that nVidia wanted everyone to use.

Exactly. Cards with reference design do offer some headroom in regards of power delivery, but not enough when your attempting to chase records.

I've soldered my own capacitors onto cards as well; followed with potentiometers to increase voltages of over 2.2V.

Slapped a phase change cooler onto it and you got a chip operating at -40 degrees and over 150% GPU Core OC.

The Kingpin stuff is bolt on, plug and play, just install the cooler of choice and your good to go. Hopefully someone like Kingpin is offered to go way beyond AMD's specification as we're seeing now with the 7x00 series; locked bios, no morepowertools, just a small 15% increase in power and that's it.

 

[Why_Me]

What you say is contrary to the evidence. GN did multiple videos on the subject and every partner places the blame on Nvidia. EVGA decided to stop selling GPUs because it was fed up with Nvidia, not because of something they themselves did.

I swear, some people act like it's illegal to blame Nvidia for anything.



Good luck to anyone trying to stop a 3 trillion dollar company with a massive penchant for anti-competitive practices.

EVGA chose to give up and die.

 

[Hecate91]

EVGA chose to give up and die.

EVGA died as a GPU brand because Nvidia with their anti-competitive tactics on AIB's made it unprofitable to make cards to compete with the FE design. If EVGA had continued with the RTX 40 series cards it wouldn't have been sustainable especially with the melting power connector.
Other brands like Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI can get profit margins from things like motherboards, monitors, or SSD's.

 

[R-T-B]

EVGA died a quick death once they decided to forego Team Green. The power of Nvidia is real.

It couldn't be that the owner literally doesn't want to do this anymore and does not trust a successor, as he said in interviews?

Anything else is guesswork.

 

[Dr. Dro]

EVGA died as a GPU brand because Nvidia with their anti-competitive tactics on AIB's made it unprofitable to make cards to compete with the FE design. If EVGA had continued with the RTX 40 series cards it wouldn't have been sustainable especially with the melting power connector.
Other brands like Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI can get profit margins from things like motherboards, monitors, or SSD's.

That's your anti-Nvidia bias talking and little more. For an unsustainable business EVGA poured an insane amount of resources on the RTX 30 series, and did not spend anything significant in the other areas that could have become profitable for them.

It's just the reality the CEO guy doesn't care anymore. That's all there is to it.

What you say is contrary to the evidence. GN did multiple videos on the subject and every partner places the blame on Nvidia. EVGA decided to stop selling GPUs because it was fed up with Nvidia, not because of something they themselves did.

I swear, some people act like it's illegal to blame Nvidia for anything.



Good luck to anyone trying to stop a 3 trillion dollar company with a massive penchant for anti-competitive practices.

It's way easier to point fingers and blame a scapegoat that is hierarchically much higher - yes, paint Nvidia as the devil... I'm waiting on the other AIBs complaining, or at least going bankrupt.

What of their motherboards? Excellent audio cards? PSUs? Peripherals? Come on. It's just not Nvidia's fault. Everyone knows this. They didn't put enough effort, lost ground and were eventually left behind.

All the of the top premium SKUs in general from ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are exclusive to Nvidia now. Nvidia fully implemented the GeForce partner program and the tech news media didn't give a crap.

Maybe Radeon cards are not the wonder that some people on tech forums seem to believe they are and fail to maintain a meager 10% market share. Who would want a Radeon when they don't have a brand bias? They don't offer anything that stands out against the competition.

AMD's own failure to captivate the market and earn the trust of big AIBs cannot be attributed to Nvidia. They realize they have to release better products with a matching feature set. This takes time, and requires correct execution. Give AMD some time, but they'll never really catch up.

 

[chrcoluk]

Kingpin was always about making sure that the boards had exactly what they needed to be the best without bean counters coming in and demanding lower quailty parts/lower numbers of phases etc be used to meet a price point.

So they were always pricy, but they offered the best of the best that class of card could offer with only the silicon lottery being the only thing he couldnt control.

I could honestly imagine that the Kingpin 4090 would have been a 2 slot AIO card from the start AND 2 power connecters coming out in the normal location and not the top that nVidia wanted everyone to use.

I think his 5090 will be 2 slot AIO, he is seeing the same as me, these triple slot air cooling is a bit silly. He also mentioned what you said with the power connector placements.

I take back my original thoughts on being no place for Kingpin, I quite like the idea of a Kingpin AIO, then later it becomes standardised on other cards.

 

[Hecate91]

That's your anti-Nvidia bias talking and little more. For an unsustainable business EVGA poured an insane amount of resources on the RTX 30 series, and did not spend anything significant in the other areas that could have become profitable for them.

It's just the reality the CEO guy doesn't care anymore. That's all there is to it.



It's way easier to point fingers and blame a scapegoat that is hierarchically much higher - yes, paint Nvidia as the devil... I'm waiting on the other AIBs complaining.

I find it ironic you call me biased, when you're clearly biased towards Nvidia while ignoring the truth here.
GN has done several videos on EVGA exiting the business, it is both EVGA not being profitable making graphics cards, and CEO wanting to step down, according to GN the CEO was also tired of dealing with Nvidia.
EVGA did invest in making AMD motherboards, peripherals, and sound cards, although no one seemed to be interested in anything except their gpu's and power supplies. Motherboards were already a niche for them so there isn't much else for EVGA to be profitable on besides power supplies.
Presenting the facts isn't finger pointing, Nvidia is a anti-competitive company which has tight control over all their AIB's down to how they design cards, Kingpin even hints at that in the GN video. And it isn't some coincidence Asus and Gigabyte aren't making any high end AMD cards or that MSI dropped them altogether.

 

[Easy Rhino]

people are still into overclocking? i want massive efficiency, not a bloated electric bill.

 

[64K]

I was wondering where Kingpin would end up. I was never a follower of his but I did like to see the crazy OC he did on GPUs.

It couldn't be that the owner literally doesn't want to do this anymore and does not trust a successor, as he said in interviews?

Anything else is guesswork.

There was more going on than that but Nvidia isn't entirely to blame. Here's an article that may be of interest that I remember at the time. JPR reported that 80% of EVGA's revenue came from GPUs but also that EVGA accounted for 40% of Nvidia GPU sales overall. A hell of a lot of gamers liked and trusted EVGA cards and designs. I had a few myself over the years.

Profit margins for AIB partners were becoming abysmal while Nvidia's profits continued to soar. Ripe ground for resentments to grow.

GeForce GPUs are 80% of EVGA’s revenue—but it’s cutting ties with Nvidia anyway

EVGA will continue selling current-gen GeForce cards until it runs out of stock.

arstechnica.com

 

[Dr. Dro]

I find it ironic you call me biased, when you're clearly biased towards Nvidia while ignoring the truth here.
GN has done several videos on EVGA exiting the business, it is both EVGA not being profitable making graphics cards, and CEO wanting to step down, according to GN the CEO was also tired of dealing with Nvidia.
EVGA did invest in making AMD motherboards, peripherals, and sound cards, although no one seemed to be interesting in anything except their gpu's and power supplies. Motherboards were already a niche for them so there isn't much else for EVGA to be profitable on besides power supplies.
Presenting the facts isn't finger pointing, Nvidia is a anti-competitive company which has tight control over all their AIB's down to how they design cards, Kingpin even hints at that in the GN video. And it isn't some coincidence Asus and Gigabyte aren't making any high end AMD cards or that MSI dropped them altogether.

Can you really blame them for not wanting to even bother with products the market has clearly rejected? With RDNA 4 being out of the high-end game and Battlemage coming after them at the low and midrange, you should fully expect this situation to worsen over time. AMD needs to release products the market wants. Not what some boomers on tech forums nostalgic for the ATI days want. They need a trump card other than good Linux support. Like I said on my earlier post, AMD's failure to captivate the market and motivate AIBs to develop products based on their architecture is nobody's but their own. There is no grand conspiracy from Nvidia here, no matter how much any of you may have a personal point to hate them.

If there was a shred of truth about these GPP allegations (really, you AMD guys can NEVER let a grudge go, it's been almost ten years and you are still harping about it), don't you think the FTC, money grubbing lawyers and at this $3.5T valuation, even NGOs wouldn't be rushing to get a check and spread as much negative publicity as possible? Come on.

Their investments failed - each and every one of EVGA's peripheral businesses have failed. Will you tell me that Nvidia is at fault for them to giving up on the NU Audio after the Asahi Kasei fire? Or is Nvidia at fault that they started to pump out junk tier power supplies that relied on their "world-class RMA, sure, our product is junk but if it blows up, we'll cover it!"? Is it Nvidia's fault that they stopped releasing new keyboards and mice after the last few they released received lukewarm at best reviews? That they abandoned most of their former ventures such as their network cards a loong time ago? Sure, just put it all on Uncle Jensen's tab!

Here's the reality outside of the red bubble: no one wants Radeons, especially at the high-end where people are actually willing to spend money on a better product, so why on Earth would any brand spend the R&D to develop a premium board based on an AMD chip unless they are exclusive to AMD? In that case, since you insist on a niche within a niche, Sapphire and TUL got you covered, and I haven't seen a XOC "Atomic" board from them in the past few generations either. TUL at least released those PowerColor Liquid Devil cards, which are probably the closest to a super-high-end AMD design we've had in years.

This might hurt AMD fans' feelings, but the truth is, until AMD itself stops releasing these awful product lineups one after another, nobody will take them seriously. The graph even shows that the market at large cares not one bit for this AMD v. NV squabble, every time AMD released a product that the market wanted, the market share had a direct response.

I was wondering where Kingpin would end up. I was never a follower of his but I did like to see the crazy OC he did on GPUs.

There was more going on than that but Nvidia isn't entirely to blame. Here's an article that may be of interest that I remember at the time. JPR reported that 80% of EVGA's revenue came from GPUs but also that EVGA accounted for 40% of Nvidia GPU sales overall. A hell of a lot of gamers liked and trusted EVGA cards and designs. I had a few myself over the years.

Profit margins for AIB partners were becoming abysmal while Nvidia's profits continued to soar. Ripe ground for resentments to grow.

View attachment 352354

GeForce GPUs are 80% of EVGA’s revenue—but it’s cutting ties with Nvidia anyway

EVGA will continue selling current-gen GeForce cards until it runs out of stock.

arstechnica.com

Is this exclusive to GeForce or does this account for first-party enterprise hardware that did not previously exist as well? That's an extreme caveat to the point that it would completely invalidate the argument otherwise.

 

[R-T-B]

For an unsustainable business

Yeah being privately owned the idea that they were "unsustainable" is laughable.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yeah being privately owned the idea that they were "unsustainable" is laughable.

Really, they actually finished the RTX 4090 Kingpin board, as well as the X670E Classified. All the R&D costs on those two (high-margin!) products were completely wasted because neither was released to the public. It's as if the commitment to supporting these itself wasn't worth it in the eyes of management.

I get labeled an NVIDIA fanboy or an EVGA hater all the time when I point out these things that seem rather obvious to me, but I felt EVGA's exit from the market a ton, I really liked their products, especially the NU Audio - homerun of a product, can't imagine my PC without it.

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

Exactly. Cards with reference design do offer some headroom in regards of power delivery, but not enough when your attempting to chase records.

I've soldered my own capacitors onto cards as well; followed with potentiometers to increase voltages of over 2.2V.

Slapped a phase change cooler onto it and you got a chip operating at -40 degrees and over 150% GPU Core OC.

The Kingpin stuff is bolt on, plug and play, just install the cooler of choice and your good to go. Hopefully someone like Kingpin is offered to go way beyond AMD's specification as we're seeing now with the 7x00 series; locked bios, no morepowertools, just a small 15% increase in power and that's it.

Exactly, Kingpin products were great for people who wanted to step into extreme OC without being gatekeepered behind knowledge walls of knowing how to modify power stages, what to look out for in PCB designs as weaklinks when going extreme and logical placements of components to make mounting/running cards under LN2 without issues.

Its one area I am starting to dislike around PC component manufacturers is how they want to pen us into the Console/Apple sort of mentality where they tell us what our hardware can do and go no further. All to please the beancounters so that when people do stupid stuff they may get granted an RMA cause they cant prove they were being stupid.

I think his 5090 will be 2 slot AIO, he is seeing the same as me, these triple slot air cooling is a bit silly. He also mentioned what you said with the power connector placements.

I take back my original thoughts on being no place for Kingpin, I quite like the idea of a Kingpin AIO, then later it becomes standardised on other cards.

I like the though of how Kingpin is going around GPU boost etc. He realises that for the average consumer its a good thing because it removes a lot of the guess work/crashing of yesteryear. He has also worked out how to work around it to get the most out of a card and what that takes. That means that if/when we get a Kingpin 5090 etc I suspect it may be the fastest or it may actually not be. But the Boost clock it advertises will be something it hits the majority if not all the time vs now where those boost clocks on some of the more extreme cards are hit in "ideal" circumstances.

In regards to AIO/Air cooling he has said that he understands with Air there is real limitations with high wattage cards getting them to clock high, and that just slapping most slots worth of cooler isnt going to get you great gains. Hence him moving to AIOs on his card for the last few gens of products.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

people are still into overclocking? i want massive efficiency, not a bloated electric bill.

Agree, and not just the electric bill, hours getting it stable, extra cooling, all for how much of an improvment, 5%/10%. i lost interest years ago.

 

[TheDeeGee]

EVGA died a quick death once they decided to forego Team Green. The power of Nvidia is real.

If i stop eating i die quick as well, the power of food is real.

 

[Pooch]

Agree, and not just the electric bill, hours getting it stable, extra cooling, all for how much of an improvment, 5%/10%. i lost interest years ago.

And the added heat from oc, thats why all the descisions i make on parts are based on price/efficiency ratio. 300 for the rtx 3060 170w vs over 400 to 500$ for 3060ti 200 w @ the time of purchase 1 year ago. 3600 and later 5600x 65w processors vs the 95w or 125 w cpus. as these are the components that use the most power this is where efficiency matters most. with minor adjustments to default maximum settings to most games and i highly recommend dlss in the QUALITY setting only and you can achieve incredible visuals especially with a properly calibrated 1440 hdr fast panel. some visuals can become so striking in realism it really is like a sense of euphoria. yea you gotta play with things to get it jsut right, but thats with anything, that you want to be perfect, you have to perfect it yourself.

 

[windwhirl]

Overclocking is dead anyway

 

[Xaled]

EVGA chose to give up and die.

Even in business, there are things called "ethics" and "honour". Ngreedia and its slaves know nothing about them for sure.

 

[evernessince]

It's way easier to point fingers and blame a scapegoat that is hierarchically much higher - yes, paint Nvidia as the devil... I'm waiting on the other AIBs complaining, or at least going bankrupt.

It's easy to point fingers at Nvidia because they have engaged in and continue to engage in anti-consumer practices. We know this for a fact because multiple times now it has bubbled to the surface publicly. They are currently under investigation for anti-trust but they've gotten in trouble for lying about card specs, lying to their investors, strong arming AIBs (whether that be the GPP or the current situation where only Nvidia is allowed ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI's premium SKUs), cheating on benchmarks, implementing malicious game tech (tessellation far beyond what was visible in Crysis 2 merely to nuke AMD performance), ect. The list goes on. Heck they never did own up to the fact that the 3000 series cards, in particular the 3090, was feeding back noise into the 12v sense pin which caused some PSUs like the Seasonic prime to trip OCD. That was an Nvidia design fault, not Seasonic. Nvidia can do no wrong.

What of their motherboards? Excellent audio cards? PSUs? Peripherals? Come on. It's just not Nvidia's fault. Everyone knows this. They didn't put enough effort, lost ground and were eventually left behind.

A majority of EVGA's revenue was graphics cards They were the largest AIB for Nvidia after all. It's different for ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte who were diversified.

EVGA was Nvidia's most ardent partner and Nvidia tossed them aside like trash just like they did BFG and XFX. Like Linus Torvalds said:

A company so terrible to work with that even your partners who signed on to exclusively make products for you decide it isn't worth it anymore.

But sure, despite all the evidence let's just pretend it's everyone else's fault. /s

Maybe Radeon cards are not the wonder that some people on tech forums seem to believe they are and fail to maintain a meager 10% market share.

No one is on the forums claiming that AMD cards are wonders. That's a load of nonsense.

Who would want a Radeon when they don't have a brand bias? They don't offer anything that stands out against the competition.

Typically AMD has lower prices and more VRAM, two very important things for most folks. They do have a good driver interface and a few features Nvidia doesn't have like built in OC and better power management options. Obviously Nvidia has more exclusive features of course but AMD's 10% marketshare isn't proportionate to how competitive their products are. AMD had 19.4% marketshare with Bulldozer CPUs so why is a vastly more competitive RDNA architecture only netting a mere 10% after 3 generations? Software lock-in and mindshare.

AMD's own failure to captivate the market and earn the trust of big AIBs cannot be attributed to Nvidia. They realize they have to release better products with a matching feature set.

Trust has nothing to do with as Nvidia has thoroughly demonstrated with the way it treats AIBs. AMD has litteraly been releasing products with a matching feature set, that clearly hasn't worked either. Could they release better products? Yes, RDNA3 for example could have been more power efficient but TBH I believe the software-lock in is more problematic. That doesn't mean it only deserved 10% marketshare though. It's probably why AMD is going after the AI market aside from the huge margins, aside from ROCm making it easier to move to AMD the ecosystem is young and AMD has a change to get in realitively early, hopefully pushing for open source solutions.

This takes time, and requires correct execution. Give AMD some time, but they'll never really catch up.

That's a rather dour prediction. Not sure I'd want to see GPU pricing in a market where AMD never catches up, aside from the obvious impact that could have on innovation. Nvidia has continued to innovate despite being in the lead for awhile but there's no guarante that will continue ad infinitum.

 

[Caring1]

You also need to live in one of the coldest place on earth too , there is no way to keep the 4090 below 31C on watercooling/aircooling

So we have turned full circle back to ln2 again.

 

[R-T-B]

It's as if the commitment to supporting these itself wasn't worth it in the eyes of management.

Yep. If you want to retire without selling it wouldn't be.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

I think his 5090 will be 2 slot AIO, he is seeing the same as me, these triple slot air cooling is a bit silly. He also mentioned what you said with the power connector placements.

I take back my original thoughts on being no place for Kingpin, I quite like the idea of a Kingpin AIO, then later it becomes standardised on other cards.

That's exactly why I went with the RTX 3090 Kingpin: The AIO liquid cooling + a bit smaller in size + quality. Any company that doesn't pick him up are either idiots, too set in how they want to do things(i.e. too many cooks spoil the soup), or both. I'm not sure how it would go with PNY if he joins them. PNY is more of a "generic" brand and if they don't allow him to set the hardware standard(s), Kingpin will just turn into another 3DFX(if anyone remembers the voodoo cards).

Anyway, regarding EVGA & NVidia, you can rest assured EVGA was losing money or they wouldn't have discontinued the graphics cards.

 

[freeagent]

Overclocking is not dead, don't fool yourselves. Just because you don't do it, doesn't mean that others don't.

It is still alive an well, we call it tuning these days, and everyone is doing it.

Some people are better at it than others, it has always been that way.

 

[nguyen]

So we have turned full circle back to ln2 again.

We could do it the easy way of using an AC blowing directly into the PC, like Jayztwocents did

Or the hard way, watercooling + Dry Ice (which will require shielding components from condensation)

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

Overclocking is dead anyway

More like the enthusiast market is dead.