8Pack Testing EVGA GTYX980 Kingpin Edition

8 Pack

8 Pack

8 Pack

OcUK Staff
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I was very lucky to get my hands on a Kingpin Edition GTX 980 by EVGA a week or so ago so thought I would share some thoughts and results with you guys on the forum. After the amazing results I saw with Classified I could not wait to overclock this card.

Unlike Classified where I went straight to extreme cooling I will start with Air and the stock cooler on this one.

On first inspection of the card we have great build quality. The cooler is very similar to Classified in looks but the card now comes with a back plate as standard. No doubt in my mind this is not only helping with rigidity of the PCB but also overall cooling with the card. This cooler ran around 2C cooler than any other 980 I have tested with similar voltages and ambient temperatures. This for sure is a win as EVGA have taken a great formula from the Classified and developed it even further. Also contributing to the cool running of this card is a different PWM design now supporting two eight pin and one six pin connector this meaning the VRM on the card is running cooler and the PCB too even at high loads and voltages. So far so good great design EVGA!!

Now lets look at some air cooling results at 18c ambient in room temps.

3D mark Fire strike Extreme Bench


Score 8144 on Air cooling, with EVGA 980 KPE at 1621 core 2268 mems.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4282539

3D mark Firestrike Bench



Score 16635 on Air cooling, with EVGA 980 KPE at 1621 core 2268 mems.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/4282546

These scores are the best scores I have seen out of any GTX980 on air cooling and so are the overclocks. Over 1620 on core with over 2250 mems all on the stock cooler is absolutely crazy performance. Having produced these scores I checked our forum benching threads and see in fact they are the best 980 scores period on none extreme cooling so the KPE is showing other cards the door that are running on water too. This tells us that the binning of this card by EVGA is absolutely top notch and the selecting of components and PCB also.

Next I will try this card on Ln2 but so far so very good. Its the best performing and overclocking 980 out of the box I have seen and as such I have to recommend it for the power user. The Classy was great this card is amazing!!
 
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Might be a good alternative to titan x and save some pennies as well. Not to mention that you can not fit waterblocks to Titan without losing your warranty - that sadly rules out a titan for me.

Nice scores Ian.

Mark
 
I have Evbot yes but Classified Controller 2.1 also works fine. kpex2c Bios seems fine for Ln2 initial testing and Kpex4c is good for Air and water. I need to do more LN2 testing hence I did not post the scores here but 2100 was easy enough on this bios with 2250 mems. I get more LN2 early next week so will try again then and push higher.

For high Overclocks obviously Classified and Kingpin rule as yes binning goes on and improved PWM tuning, cooling and PCB also.
 
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Nickolp1974 said:
Heard quite a few problems with certain bios's, no idea if its sorted now??
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8 Pack said:
I have Evbot yes but Classified Controller 2.1 also works fine. kpex2c Bios seems fine for Ln2 initial testing and Kpex4c is good for Air and water. I need to do more LN2 testing hence I did not post the scores here but 2100 was easy enough on this bios with 2250 mems. I get more LN2 early next week so will try again then and push higher.

For high Overclocks obviously Classified and Kingpin rule as yes binning goes on and improved PWM tuning, cooling and PCB also.
Click to expand...

Yeah KPEX2C is pretty good for LN2 but had some bugs with Classified controller last time I checked. There was also a bug in the EvBot firmware that changed a few things to lower than necessary. I was talking to Vince about this and he gave me a few notes to let people know in case they had issues. If you (8 Pack) haven't had a driver crash with the controller then I think Vince must have updated the BIOS on his website since I last talked to him.

Nick: Give the newer air/water BIOS a whirl if you have the card. It doesn't need this, but have the dips switches on when flashing just to be sure.
 
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Hi there

Of course you can buy this insane card right here in our shop:


EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Classified KingPin Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (04G-P4-5988-KR) @ £659.99 inc VAT

GX-274-EA_400.jpg


The EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KingPin graphics card is meticulously designed for the extreme overclocker. With a 14+3 power phase design, this new digitally controlled VRM can deliver up to 600A of current, all delivered through 3 power inputs, 8pin + 8pin + 6pin. ACX2.0+ keeps the card running cool, and the ability to go single slot, with the bracket included single slot bracket, makes this one of the sleekest graphics cards designed to date.

Vince "KingPin" Lucido is an extreme overclocker who has achieved many 3DMark World Records with EVGA hardware. He contributed to the design of the GTX 980 KingPin Edition graphics card with EVGA, and had this to say:
"The power designs for both the GPU and memory on the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KingPin graphics card should allow some insane overclocking and some of the highest clock speeds seen to date. Also, with the new multi-colour LED cooler, you can customize the look of the card to fit any system.

Features:
- QST BIOS: Quick switch triple BIOS.
- MMFT: Memory MOSFET cooling plate
- 14+3 Phase Power
- Single Slot ready
- 12 layer PCB
- Customize IT: RGB LED to chose any colour you wish for the LED's to fit with any system colour design

Specification:
- GeForce GTX 980
- GPU: GeForce GTX 980 (GM204)
- Core Base Clock: 1304MHz
- Core Boost Clock: 1418MHz
- Memory Clock: 7010MHz
- Memory Size: 4096MB GDDR5
- Bus Type: PCI Express 3.0
- Memory Bus: 256-bit
- CUDA Cores: 2048
- DirectX 12: Yes
- DVI Port: 1x Dual-Link DVI, 3x DisplayPort & 1x HDMI
- DisplayPort: Yes
- HDCP: Yes
- HDMI: Yes
- Dimensions: 268.6 x 98.4 x 40 mm
- Power: 2x 8-Pin
- 600W PSU Required
- 178W TDP
- Warranty: 3yr


Only £659.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
 
bemaniac said:
Nice! if only it wasn't gimped with 4gb memory I'd totally have 2 of them
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How is it gimped?

Look at TitanX benchmarks compared to 970SLI benchmarks.

A graphics array with access to only 3.5GB of VRAM (lololol) beats the new 12gb card in nearly every scenario.

So a 980 will be fine.

I had 980 SLI and played every game at 4k with zero issue.
 
bemaniac said:
Nice! if only it wasn't gimped with 4gb memory I'd totally have 2 of them
Click to expand...

Wanna know the funny part? Some overclockers actually ran the original Titans on 3 gigs of VRAM only to get better results. For them the stock 6 gigs was a gimp. Different folks, different strokes.
 
This card really is not crippled with 4gb of memory. I will run FS ultra on Air to test 4k frame rates.
 
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