Some words from Vince Lucido (Kingpin) on MAXWELL ASIC

[Lays]

Found a post from him about how maxwell ASIC works and his thoughts and opinions as well as experience with maxwell thusfar.

Original post link (his user name on ocn is thechosewon)

http://www.overclock.net/t/1565834/evga-com-evga-to-offer-ability-to-purchase-980ti-kinpin-cards-by-asic/140#post_24201543

His quote:

Based on the comments in the thread, maybe best its best to let you guys know(who don't already) a little bit about what ASIC is and how it relates to this card or any other card for that matter past or present.

I'll hang out here a bit and check back often to answer any questions by OC.net'rs about the card, ASIC, pricing, air performance, ln2 performance, ANYTHING smile.gif.

I would rather respond with the correct information directly to someone, than see that person repeating the wrong information. They haven't started selling just yet AFIK..

Ill answer some of the questions I've seen asked already to get a start.

ASIC is not a new "measurement" , its been around for a very long time. Only just recently is it available to be seen through public utility though(gpuz). It represents a few measurements on a GPU, not just one as many think. Basically it measures the performance ability of a gpu at a given voltage. There is another measurement of leakage as well. These two values represent "ASIC" as you guys know it.

Without talking about numbers or percentages yet, higher ASIC quality means a GPU will require less voltage to run at say default specs. What does this mean roughly? It means that this GPU is using less voltage and is generating less heat per clock than a lower ASIC counterpart. HOWEVER it also means the voltage limit of what it can take on air as well as the voltage response getting weaker/noisy. Here comes the leakage part. Highest ASIC gpus have also have the highest leakage, low ASIC gpus have lowest leakage. The two values scale linearly. This is why the lowest ASIC cards are the ones that can take loads of voltage on air, and the response is good. Usually these low asic cards can OUT OVERCLOCK their higher asic counterparts because they end up scaling higher on clocks maxed out with the benefit of the voltage increase that the high ASIC cards cannot. They are stuck on lower volts because the leakage is already very high.

How does ASIC relate to air overclocking? Typically a higher ASIC gpu will overclock nicely on default voltage/air cooling, yielding highest overclocks WITHOUT any voltage increase. Less voltage/less heat. Lower ASIC gpu will need to use more voltage for a given clock as the higher ASIC one. Back in the Kepler days, this meant great air/water overclocking on our 680's and 780's. I remember posting a thread at evga explaining to people that they needed to use 1.4v+ (at dmm) to max out their classified gpus on air. God I miss those days smile.gif. Back then, the best gpus on air/water were the low asic ones, they could always oc/ov the highest. Times have changed, and this doesn't apply to maxwell however.

How does ASIC relate to Maxwell Air overclocking? With maxwell gpus the above definitions of ASIC do not apply Well you guys know maxwell 980,980ti, titanx have ambient cooling voltage limit on what v's you can give it on air/water. That's just the way it is. Its been proven over and over on every single manuf brand 980,titanx, 980ti. kp980 owners as well, no different. These gpus don't like voltage on air over 1.22-1.23v usually max. Just green garbage all over the screen with more, no better clocks. Best clocks usually achieved with stock voltage or maybe slightly higher.

So given what we know about ASIC quality and the voltage scaling capability of 980,980ti,t-x on air/water(NONE), it indicates the best gpus on 980Ti, will be the ones that can overclock the highest on default voltage or near default voltage. Ever noticed why almost every single review of 980ti (any brand) is around 1500mhz? The reviewer never can never add much voltage for better OC result.

I'm mostly an Ln2 person, but some users complaining about 980kpe not overclocking on air prompted me to try and make a better bios for ambient that would allow voltage. I managed a slight improvement that works on some cards, that's. But I learned a lot about the scaling of Maxwell on Air during that time and how we could if anything improve on this with KP980TI.

How does ASIC relate to LN2 overclocking and more specifically kp980ti?

As explained above, higher asic = higher leakage. Leakage is actually a good thing and can be contained on LN2 cooling. Cards with more leakage will run a bit hotter, usually extending cold limits on gpus. Getting more core MHZ on LN2. Every overclocker wants every last mhz right? Higher ASIC GPUS also have better memory controllers and typically can overclock the memory very high on LN2. Lower ASIC gpus usually are not so good at driving the memory on Ln2 and the overclocker will lose a lot of MHZ when going cold.

Lastly, every serious overclocker knows the highest ASIC gpus use the least amount of voltage for any given clock. This means these gpus will always have the highest potential for scaling to the absolute highest clock on LN2, because most 980ti gpus max out around the same voltage level on the high end max max ln2 as well. Wouldn't you want the most clock you could get for that voltage smile.gif KP card pushes them all the way. Unless its a lemon gpu (cant test every single one on ln2 lol), it will max out on this card.

Does high ASIC guarantee highest clocks on air? NO. The other part of ASIC which is Leakage is high on these, so that can actually hold back some high asic gpus on air. This doesn't mean its bad on Ln2 is well, and usually the contrary. I Tested around 15 pieces of so KP980Ti these days, all different asic levels. Some as high as 81% all the way to 64% (which we wont even sell smile.gif the average clocks on air were roughly 1550mhz Lowest was 1526mhz, highest was 1592mhz . Seemed like every card went to 1539mhz or so smile.gif Most of the higher asic cards did as expected and hit the upper 1550's. None could pass 1600mhz, but some came really close! Those were mostly higher ASIC%'s. You should know that every kp980ti is binned gpu and even the minimum ASIC level for any card is very high compared to average. A 70-72% asic card is a great card. Reviewers should be hitting low to mid 1500's on avg and some cards hitting close to 1600. If your an air/water guy and don't plan to run ln2, I think no matter what asic level of card you get, it will do mid-low 1500's and there is a chance on all kp 980Tis regardless of asic to hit the magic 1600. Still need some luck too, leakage can limit this. For the hardcore users or the ones that may run ln2, I would think more seriously about asic and the time/money you can save buy getting something closer to what you want. Being an Ln2 overclocker myself, I feel this buy is mostly for you.

Does ASIC % guarantee highest clocks on LN2? No it doesn't, it is only an indicator of what to expect. EVGA is giving the chance for customers to zero in on exactly on what you want. Some users will try many cards to find the highest asics for best LN2 overclocking, its not a new thing. The highest ASIC gpus will almost always be the best ones on LN2 as explained above. These are the users we mostly are targeting with this. The ones that end up buying and trying lots of cards to find the one gem, almost always a high ASIC card. They will end up spending much more than the price difference of kp980ti high asic and wasting lots of time in the process. This is geared for them.

Are we binning gpus away from other cards to make this one (classy or other)?. LOL I wish, but no way that's possible or anyone would even let me do that haha. For sure there will be guys on classys or other cards who find a high asic gpu here or there and im sure they will let us all know they paid XXXX lower than what someone paid for their KP and still got a high asic.

KP980ti is very special card in many ways hw wise. This is just one special added buying option for our more hardcore users on first few batches directly from us, that's all smile.gif

Anything I didn't cover or you want to know something specifically about the card, I'm happy to answer.

[VioDuskar]

saw this before, brb

 

fudgemonkeys...

i can't find it. a few days ago someone posted about buying binned kingpins, and the price ranges

[Castdeath97]

TL DR!!!!

[Speaker1264]

TLDR; EVGA will let you buy their 980ti KINGPIN card based on the ASIC value.  Higher ASIC value means better chance, still only a chance, at higher overclocks.  With around 15 cards tested, ASIC values ranging from 64%-81%, cards ran as low as 1526 mhz up to 1592 mhz overclocked, with the average around 1550 mhz.  This strategy of selling cards based on ASIC values is mainly for those planning to overclock using LN2, since the extreme overclockers need every last bit of performance for breaking records and stuff.  For your average user doing this probably won't make sense since there will likely be some kind of premium, and actual in-game performance difference is likely to be very little.

[BoredErica]

Dis iz why OCN is FTW.

[Gofspar]

Hopefully this clears all the stupidity around ASIC and how people seem to think if you have a high asic you have a god card, 67 ASIC here and have the forum's fastest 970 and HWBOT's fastest 970 on air/water.

 

All the misconceptions around ASIC are hopefully cleared up, if not i'll have to start selling Official LTT drool bags for people.

[BoredErica]

i'll have to start selling Official LTT drool bags for people.

I'll take 5. 

[1Scotty1]

Yeah, because buying a 80+% ASIC as compared to say 60% ASIC at a price difference of 200 or more is really worth the extra 10-20Hz    /s

[Gofspar]

Yeah, because buying a 80+% ASIC as compared to say 60% ASIC at a price difference of 200 or more is really worth the extra 10-20Hz    /s

>implying that ASIC will do anything at all, it's a GUIDE not a ruling. ASIC doesn't mean alot unless you are sub-ambient which is where decent scaling actually happens.

[1Scotty1]

>implying that ASIC will do anything at all

My words exactly... I like my reference 980Ti Superclocked, thank you very much, don't need none of that Classified/Kingpin bull...

[BoredErica]

Yeah, because buying a 80+% ASIC as compared to say 60% ASIC at a price difference of 200 or more is really worth the extra 10-20Hz    /s

Wat

 

If there's a difference it's definitely more than 10-20hz. More than a million times that probably, more than 10-20mhz, maybe 100mhz? 

Although yeah, extra 10% fps at most? for what, 35-40% more dough? Worth it to some people on OCN then. Little rich for my blood though. I'm still CPU bottlenecked after all.

[Lays]

My words exactly... I like my reference 980Ti Superclocked, thank you very much, don't need none of that Classified/Kingpin bull...

Honestly ive said this so many times, NOBODY should buy a kpe for gaming alone. Benching is really what its built for and marketed for imo.

[1Scotty1]

Honestly ive said this so many times, NOBODY should buy a kpe for gaming alone. Benching is really what its built for and marketed for imo.

I know, right? I never even seen a gaming build here on LTT that has the KPE

[BoredErica]

I know, right? I never even seen a gaming build here on LTT that has the KPE

iz sexy tho

dat prestige

[1Scotty1]

iz sexy tho

dat prestige

Meh, I moved on from those ACX coolers, to be honest, I don't like the look of them much, I prefer the reference blowers, even though they have higher temps I might even mod it to house a random AiO cooler some time later

[Praesi]

My words exactly... I like my reference 980Ti Superclocked, thank you very much, don't need none of that Classified/Kingpin bull...

Classified/Kingpin/HoF are only "Bulls" when you do extreme cooling with serious OC. Like Kingpin said before. You need max temps of 15° under load to reach more than 1600mhz stable.

Everyone here who bought a kinpin&Co and just watercool it, will not reach better OC Scores than anyone else with a random Custom Design.

[1Scotty1]

Classified/Kingpin/HoF are only "Bulls" when you do extreme cooling with serious OC. Like Kingpin said before. You need max temps of 15° under load to reach more than 1600mhz stable.

Everyone here who bought a kinpin&Co and just watercool it, will not reach better OC Scores than anyone else with a random Custom Design.

Yeah, I understand that well anyone who forks up over a grand for a GPU and then do insane cooling clearly has too much cash to burn

[Praesi]

Yeah, I understand that well anyone who forks up over a grand for a GPU and then do insane cooling clearly has too much cash to burn

Ya, but there are People who buy this Cards and dont do insane cooling. Thats the weird part in my eyes

[1Scotty1]

Ya, but there are People who buy this Cards and dont do insane cooling. Thats the weird part in my eyes

Mostly for bragging rights or epeen

[GlassBomb]

saw this before, brb

 

fudgemonkeys...

i can't find it. a few days ago someone posted about buying binned kingpins, and the price ranges

 

This post is what you were looking for.

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/411772-evga-puts-an-end-to-the-silicon-lottery-for-the-first-time-ever-with-the-gtx-980-ti-kngpn

 

$1,050 for a 80%+ ASIC card.

[Lays]

Classified/Kingpin/HoF are only "Bulls" when you do extreme cooling with serious OC. Like Kingpin said before. You need max temps of 15° under load to reach more than 1600mhz stable.

Everyone here who bought a kinpin&Co and just watercool it, will not reach better OC Scores than anyone else with a random Custom Design.

 

 

That's not entirely true, there are ways of getting water that cold.   There are loops that can provide only a few degrees above ambient for load temps, all you'd need to do is bring the ambient temp down by putting the radiator outside a window in the winter or something and adding a bit of anti-freeze to the loop.  Or even just using a chiller.

 

This is something I'll be trying with my 1080mm radiator that shows up tomorrow.

 

Also in a previous quote he mentioned once load temps are around 25C maxwell really starts to scale, which should definitely be do-able if you can get ambients down to like 10-12c.