Kingpin Blames Contractual Friction For Skipping A Custom GeForce RTX 5090
by
Thiago Trevisan
—
Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 09:55 AM EDT
There are graphics card enthusiasts, and then there are graphics card enthusiasts. The Kingpin line of GPUs, was a staple of high-end NVIDIA cards made popular by the modder and EVGA. Sadly, we won't see the newest generation GeForce RTX 5090 get the Kingpin treatment. Vince Lucido, the man (the myth, and legend) behind the Kingpin products, recently made some revelations on his Youtube channel.
According to him, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs won't see a new Kingpin card. He states it would make things tough for him with timing, and reveals he has contractual issues (or "contractual friction," as he puts it) that would factor into the equation. He was seriously talking to NVIDIA board partner PNY, but it appears that won't come to be.
For years, Kingpin GPUs were made in partnership with EVGA, such as the GeForce RTX 1080 Ti Kingpin. They had the same base specifications as their namesake GPUs, but were modified to be highly overclockable. It was not rare to see enthusiasts using exotic cooling such as liquid nitrogen in order to achieve the best benchmarks.
The GeForce RTX 5090 is shaping up to be one of the most impressive GPUs ever released by a wide margin. While we're highly impressed by the 2-slot Founders Edition version, it would have been nice to also see a custom Kingpin variant with various upgrades.
Here are two Kingpin GPUs in a test rig I did several years ago for fun and benchmarking
EVGA sadly ceased to produce GPUs for NVIDIA, and henceforth any GPUs for that matter. With this downfall, also came the unfortunate downfall of the Kingpin branding to the chagrin of enthusiasts. Vince also states that the future of his Kingpin GPUs may not even be "Team Green," suggesting that it could be "another color," which hints at working with AMD (Radein, Team Red) or Intel (Arc, Team Blue).
The Kingpin GPUs were not only some of the best performance GPUs we've ever seen, they also had unique designs that were part of the package. The later models even came attached to a 360mm AIO and were liquid cooled for best performance. While they commanded a premium over the standard NVIDIA GPUs, it was reasonable for the features that these cards offered.
It is unknown what the future will be like for Kingpin GPUs, but Vince hints that the line is not completely dead. Will any other company do a similar version? ASUS, even according to Vince, was interested and wanted the EVGA marketshare. MSI did not seem to show interest according to him, but it is possible each brand may want its own identity with its flagship products.
