EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Kingpin

[nicklmg]

NCIX: http://bit.ly/1dYKIaa

Amazon: http://geni.us/17Rx

 

The timing of the GTX 980 Kingpin release seemed a bit... interesting because it coincided with the Titan X launch. Is the Kingpin the best current card for gamers?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1UrI478K6A&feature=youtu.be

[Guest]

Media offline @ 0:21

[Silyy097]

Shouldnt it be the K|ngp|n?

[Lays]

I really wish you guys would get custom BIOS & use the voltage modding tools and really push cards like this, to show the reason cards like this actually exist.

 

EDIT: HOLY CRAP YOU ACTUALLY DID IT, THANK YOU.

[MegaDave91]

Shouldnt it be the K|ngp|n?

Just like Nvidia should be "nVidia"? Be Quiet be "Be Quiet!" ? Please, man... It irks me why some people are so anal about this.

[henrizzle]

I wonder how this will compare to the rumored 980 TI.

 

BTW someone derped up at 20 seconds when editing

[Zeke]

Media offline @ 0:21

Might be a new intro...

[nicklmg]

Media offline @ 0:21

I wonder how this will compare to the rumored 980 TI.

 

BTW someone derped up at 20 seconds when editing

Might be a new intro...

Definitely a new intro.

Nah jk, some files were moved, mistakes were made. Re-rendering a new version before posting.

[Phobophobic]

Loving this new intro, guys.

[Nowak]

That graphics card has more power phases than my motherboard.

 

I don't know what to think of this.

[sgloux3470]

This card doesn't make sense to me.  But I suppose it's not meant to make any sense.

 

Are you an extreme overclocker looking to break 3dmark records?  Then you've already bought a TitanX (or four of them.)  

Are you a regular gamer? You're not going to gain a significantly higher overclock on air with this card.  They managed a base clock of around 1439 MHz , but it's only going to boost to around ~1550 MHz.  Most 980's I've seen can hit 1500 MHz on air, except maybe reference cards.  

 

Are you going to throw a water block on it to push it as far as it will go? Well congrats, you've got an extra ~5 FPS over an air cooled overclocked 980.  Is this card going overclock much better than a hydrocopper?  Probably not. 

 

Meanwhile you're spending over $150 more than other 980 models.  You can get a reference 980 and one of http://www.evga.com/products/Product.aspx?pn=400-HY-H980-B1  for $50 cheaper.  

 

 

I like to think I'm an enthusiast and all that jazz, but I really don't see a huge benefit to buy these factory overclocked EXTRA VOLTAGE premium 980's.  I bought both of my 980's for $700 CAD and they pretty much overclocked independently to +- 10 MHz of each other despite one of them being an EVGA SUPERCLOCKED and one being an ASUS Strix.  The performance difference was negligible.  Buy the cheapest aftermarket 980 you can get and overclock it and chances are you'll be +- 5 FPS within the most expensive badass 980 on water.  You won't hit much past 1600-1700 MHz without LN2 from what I've seen.

 

 

So tired of people recommending $650-750 980's when a $550-600 one will perform nearly identical and overclock nearly as well.  Is an extra $100-150 worth ~100 MHz at most?

[Silyy097]

Just like Nvidia should be "nVidia"? Be Quiet be "Be Quiet!" ? Please, man... It irks me why some people are so anal about this.

I mean, they did call the old 987 (bleh what im saying) I mean, 780 Ti K|ingP|n...

 

Source:

[shert73]

This card is for Ln2 not water or air. But now that the titan x is out that's what the overclockers are using. Waste of money imho

[DXMember]

your shadow settings are wrong, if you are on AMD it is given that you want to do CHS, same as nVidia will use MFAA instead of MSAA

would be interesting to re-do the GTA V showdown using vendor specific settings.

[BoredErica]

Here is a copy-paste of my post on the video itself, I wonder what you guys think...

 

I don't see the point of a 980 Kingpin. You can get a cheap 980 that will hit most of the performance a 980 Kingpin will achieve. Performance per dollar is very relevant here because the 980 isn't the top of the line card anymore. It used to be, and if Kingpin was released during that time it would have been kickass for sure. A regular 980 from say, MSI is $550, which is $250 less than a Kingpin. That's a 45% increase in the cost of the GPU. For how much performance gain?

It is very nice that Kingpin allows for higher than normal voltages (1.25v vs what Luke said he used, 1.35v). I don't think the Kingpin coolar is worth mentioning. It's just the normal Evga cooler, which AFAIK from the limited sources I could find, is not as quiet/cool as say, Gigabyte's or MSI's. The chart Luke showed shows a 10% increase in FPS going with an overclocked Kingpin vs an overclocked reference 980. Who actually uses a reference 980 for max overclocking on air? Nobody. It would've been much more informative to me if you compared a 980 from MSI to a 980 Kingpin. I doubt a Kingpin will score 10% better than a regular 980 from MSI or Gigabyte. Even if it does, at 45% increase in price for 10% more performance... I have to pass. The Titan X is 81% increase in price for, say, triple that... 25-50% improvement in performance? (Varies depending on settings and overclocked or not, etc.) You also get 12 gigs of Vram instead of 4. I also believe that the possible entrance of the 980 TI and the 390x will make Kingpin 980 even less relevant. I'm also assuming that there's a 10% performance benefit of say, a 980 from MSI to a 980 Kingpin, which I feel is a pretty generous estimation, even for watercooling and unlocked volting.

In my opinion, the 980 Kingpin is a cool piece of tech that doesn't make sense for a gamer. It's priced between the Titan X and regular 980, but in terms of performance it falls flat, leaving the consumer with a lower price/performance than Titan X while not even being top of the line. I also disagree with your (probably sarcastic) comment about the leds being the most important part. I moved past flashy leds and edgy gamer looks and I never looked back.

EDIT:
Perhaps the best case for the 980 Kingpin is for watercooling the thing with a cheap watercooling loop, increasing the price of the setup (getting closer to Titan X, therefore reducing the validity of the idea in the first place) but hopefully allowing for even higher voltages. Are the voltages totally unlocked? One could take the thing above Luke's 1.35v (I don't know what voltages are safe at this point though). Even with that though I still see the Titan X being the top card and the 980 Kingpin being some sort of awkward stopgap. Being a Skyrim fanatic myself, 4gb is enough but not enough to give me total freedom. 12gb of vram is total freedom. I can run a Titan X... faster... not water cooling... just air. And faster. Did I mention faster?

My two cents.
 

I really wish you guys would get custom BIOS & use the voltage modding tools and really push cards like this, to show the reason cards like this actually exist.

 

EDIT: HOLY CRAP YOU ACTUALLY DID IT, THANK YOU.

Meow

[DildorTheDecent]

Titan X doesn't have RGB LEDs that you kids like a lot.

#rekt

[Lays]

@Dark_wizzie using this card with anything other than ln2 or water is holding it back from what it can really do. this card isn't supposed to be a price to performance option. It's supposed to be an extreme overclockers wet dream.

People who are willing to push this card to its absolute limit are who should be buying it, not people using the stock cooler. This card will perform better than other 980s on air, but it will really shine on ln2 and water or other exotic cooling methods.

It's more about benchmark scores with this card IMO, not how many fps you can get in GTA V.

[Bouche4Dag]

Good video.

A nice K|NGP|N card as always; very pricey though

I'd like to suggest one thing though:

Graphs where 'lower is better', i.e. the temperature graphs, should have the lowest value at the top so the graphs always have the "best" thing at the top.

This makes it much easier to read/look at as a viewer.

Keep up the good work!

[BuckGup]

You should get a custom BIOS so you can do some actual overclocking. But it voids the warranty but I don't think Linus cares.

[ChrisxIxCross]

Nice card and all but really no reason to get it at this point w/ 980 Ti and 390x just around the corner

[Glare]

I feel like the 980Ti is gonna be a way better in the middle compared to the 980 Kingpin being in the middle of the 980 and the one and only Titan X, But I'm not to sure. I guess we will have to see for ourselves when it releases.

[peanutsrevenge]

YAY @ single row of outputs. So rare but so nice when going for EXTREME builds

[StrangeOne]

This totally wasn't the purpose of the video but I never knew the Vapor-X R9 290X was better than the reference GTX 980, and with the R9 290X (Vapor-X) being about $50-$100 cheaper, AMD is surprisingly still a valiant contender in GPUs even if they haven't released a new architecture in quite some time compared to Nvidia.

[GoennDir3000]

Something is off with the R9 290 reading on the Crysis 3 benchmark.