An overclocking legend is making a long-awaited return to graphics cards
One of the most well-known names in GPU overclocking is making a return in a big way. Vince “Kingpin” Lucido is known as the mastermind behind some of the best graphics card models you could buy over the past several generations. He famously worked with EVGA to produce Kingpin models that were built for extreme overclocking. With EVGA exiting the GPU market a few years back, we hadn’t heard much from Kingpin — until now.
It looks like Kingpin is set to work with PNY on the next generation of graphics cards. The enthusiast met up with Gamer’s Nexus recently and revealed that there’s “a pretty good chance” that we’ll see Kingpin models again soon. Kingpin showed off a PNY card sitting on his test bench, saying that it’s the first non-EVGA graphics card he’s used in 13 years.
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When thinking about big GPU brands, companies like Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte come to mind before PNY, but the partnership with Kingpin makes a lot of sense, according to the overclocker. “They are keen to dive into the extreme overclocking,” Lucido said. “The other big companies already do it. Too many cooks in the kitchen. I want to go somewhere that I can make a big impact, and I kind of feel like PNY might be that company.”
Kingpin is hedging a bit on working with PNY, but it’s hard to imagine the company would be name-dropped so explicitly on a channel as large as Gamer’s Nexus if there wasn’t some plan in the works. “I heard, you know, the vendors … maybe this year. There’s a new card coming. Not sure. I feel like now’s the time, right?” Lucido said.
A massive hole was left in the market after EVGA’s exit from graphics cards. The company was well-known for its enthusiast-grade Nvidia GPUs, up until the RTX 30-series. The company stopped producing graphics cards at that point, and it didn’t release any RTX 40-series models. The future of Kingpin, and the GPUs he produced for extreme overclocking, has been up in the air since that point. Now, it looks like the brand will be back soon.
Currently, rumors suggest Nvidia will launch its RTX 50-series GPUs before the end of the year. Although there has been some speculation that the release will slip into 2025, that doesn’t seem like the case given how Nvidia typically launches its GPUs. We’ve already seen the next-gen Blackwell architecture released into the data center, and the rumor mill hasn’t been quiet about the flagship design arriving this year.
