EVGA Almost Released A GeForce GTX 1080 Kingpin GPU And This Prototype Proves It

Just under a year ago, EVGA cut ties with NVIDIA and initiated its exit from the graphics card market together, ending an approximately 24-year run in the market. In that time, the company had some GPU gems, especially those made in collaboration with Vince “Kingpin” Lucido. As a memento of that, Lucido sent out some Kingpin PCBs to tech YouTuber JayzTwoCents, which are pretty sweet.

In the sub-10-minute video embedded below, the first card we see is the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Kingpin Edition. If that sounds funny or seems like a typo, it isn’t, as this card was never released. Only three PCBs were ever made for the 1080 Kingpin, presumably because the focus was shifted to the more capable GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, launched just a year after the original GeForce GTX 1080.


Besides the rare 1080 PCB, Jay was also sent the only engineering validation test (EVT) revision EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Kingpin Edition which was Lucido’s last graphics project. This one looks slightly different, with a significantly larger die and a different overall style from the older 1080 model. Of course, this one did end up making it to production, and was a beast of a card. 

Ultimately, both PCBs will look super cool mounted to Jay’s wall, and we must admit, we are a little jealous of the take as it is awesome. It is also a little sad to remember the good times as this sort of turns the page and closes out the EVGA graphics card chapter once more.