This changes EVERYTHING we thought we knew about water cooling our gpu's and there ASIC score.....
 
Here is a quote from Kingpin that explains why the 980 kpe performed like crap under water.....unless EVGA bins the new kpe TI cards, they are not for water coolers any longer and just for LN2. We all knew something was wrong as no matter how many volts we threw at the 980 kpe they did not scale with clocks! I for one am extremely upset at wasting 1,600 dollars on two 980 kpe cards and addition 300 on water blocks for NO REASON. KPE is for LN2 only unless EVGA Bins them with ASIC of 80% or higher.  Guess we will see if this is correct in a few days with the release of the TI KPE.
 
 

 
"Honestly speaking, I think most end users don't even realize how maxwell gpus are voltage capped at ambient type cooling. I can tell by many of the comments at OC.net, elsewhere, and also here in these card XOC bios threads. Especially compared to kepler. KP 780ti scaled great on voltage with air/water temps. Basically, more voltage = more clocks no matter what temperature.
With 980 and later gpus including titanX, the scaling on air/water has all but almost gone. I would say about 95% of all maxwell 980,titan-X, and 980ti gpus NO MATTER what vga brand pcb it is on, DO NOT SCALE with more voltage than 1.25v-1.275v at temps warmer than 25c or so. There is no magical bios that can effectively remove this.

This is exactly why almost every moderate-good asic titanX, 980, and yes 980ti clock around 1550mhz MAX AVERAGE at say 45-60C loading temps.
If you put 0c and colder on the card, you will see MUCH different behavior than what you see on air (green garbage all over screen when raising volts over 1.23-1.25vv or so)
Cards with very good ASIC value (75% and up) will tend to have the most "overclocking", but just like about every other maxwell gpu, they cannot overvolt past 1.23v-1.25v.
So highest asic cards like 80% +are almost always going to be the ones that can 1600+ on air/water, and again they do it pretty much WITHOUT overvolting over 1.23v-1.25v. Maxwell gpus with lower asic value like 65% will not be so great at air/water because these low asic gpus need voltage to scale compared to match the overclock of the high asic gpus( USING SAME USABLE VOLTAGE 1.23-1.25v)

The bios's I posted basically allow you to set a higher voltage on air/water. Some gpus can scale more, some cant, some actually will NEED more voltage than was previously needed to run same frequency. All different.

Have a better understanding now?"
 
 
 
 
Source:
 
http://kingpincooling.com....php?t=3659&page=6
 
 
EDIT to add another key post by Vince: 
 
"What I do know is that NV is causing a headache or two blocking ambient temp voltage scaling on non-reference card designs after 780ti."
 
So according to the man NVIDIA'S design is blocking the scaling on ambient temps ... even on a unlocked custom card. 
 
This may be a characteristic of the Maxwell architecture   
 
 
PLEASE SEE KINGPIN'S Explanation of this issue @  http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2362290
 
page 2 post # 47

Thank you for posting this! Otherwise i may have never seen it. And this is why buying a non over clocked gpu is imo the way to go for cost effectiveness. It is really a shame they do not bin these gpu's for that kind of card and it also is damn silly the best card on the market is limited by a normal frame buffer it should have had 8GB. 

Too many people expect because money is higher that they undoubtedly will get better results.. that is foolish thinking and it has been all along.   When you use a product as designed, you get better results.  These were designed for extreme overclocking, and mixed with Maxwell, force people to push them properly rather than expecting to empty their wallet for the results of LN2 runs.. It's not logical to waste money on an item that is intended for extreme measures with no plans of ever using anything that would allow it to work properly.  
 
I admit, I use all of my KPE cards under water.. i also have Ln2 pots for them, and I am too broke to get 50l of Ln2 to test them.  When money becomes available, I will be pushing these cards properly.  If the 980Ti classified and KPE display the issues the 980 had, I will laugh as people cry about it. I will wait, as others should!

Once again, this cements my opinion that Kingpin cards are for world record and benchmark enthusiasts only. I have had these debates in the past where owners said I was wrong to say that their Kingpin cards weren't designed to achieve a better gaming experience.

ty_ger07
Once again, this cements my opinion that Kingpin cards are for world record and benchmark enthusiasts only. I have had these debates in the past where owners said I was wrong to say that their Kingpin cards weren't designed to achieve a better gaming experience.

What that mean, for gamers best cards are Matrix, Galaxy, ... I hope Galaxy will design one model with black PCB I want to play games on high clock and you chose K|NGP|N for LN2, but maybe again Galaxy win first place same as with GTX780Ti.
That card was for gaming and for LN2, and nobody couldn't move from first place 5 months in single and multi GPU testing.  
She was first long time and after GTX980 is launched.

Scarlet-Tech
Too many people expect because money is higher that they undoubtedly will get better results.. that is foolish thinking and it has been all along.   When you use a product as designed, you get better results.  These were designed for extreme overclocking, and mixed with Maxwell, force people to push them properly rather than expecting to empty their wallet for the results of LN2 runs.. It's not logical to waste money on an item that is intended for extreme measures with no plans of ever using anything that would allow it to work properly.  
 
I admit, I use all of my KPE cards under water.. i also have Ln2 pots for them, and I am too broke to get 50l of Ln2 to test them.  When money becomes available, I will be pushing these cards properly.  If the 980Ti classified and KPE display the issues the 980 had, I will laugh as people cry about it. I will wait, as others should!

When did we ever have a GPU that did not scale to voltage under water?
We were always able to get higher clock with addition voltage and water cooling.....
We didn't care about ASIC score as it used to be the lower the better for us water coolers. 
 
This changes everything we knew 

My classified scaled when they were cold, using 0 degree ambit air to get them lower, but they never went over 1500, and when it would warm up to 20c ambient, they wouldn't hit 1450 because of thermal limits causing driver crashes.  That was forcing 1.35v at 0c and 1.4 when the ambient went up to 20c.  That is pretty crap scaling when people were getting much higher with Ln2 and nearly the same voltage.  
 
Ask yourself antandbetty, would you buy a top fuel dragster for day to day driving, to go light to light, or would you buy it for the drag strip?  Think about the K|ngp|n card the same way and then apply it to this scenario.
 
Maxwell obviously changed something, and people are asking for 1700mhz on the KPE thread for gaming.. Not going to happen on most cards. People need to get over their entitlement and start thinking realistically.  As of right now, big numbers plus deep wallets have to mean the best gaming on ambient air/water possible.  That is funny thinking right there.

Scarlet-Tech
 
Kingpin was built for benchmarks, not as a daily driver.... & everyone should know that. That said, his statement changes everything we knew about overclocking GPU's & ASIC scores under water.

I sure wish I knew what was being talked about in this thread. XD

I am new to Overclocking GPUs.
 
This all seems very interesting though. 

This is why I bought reference 980ti cards this time around. I have experience with 16 different 980s from Asus, MSI, gigabyte, and EVGA. None of the custom PCBs mattered, voltage didn't matter, water didn't matter, and neither did custom bios flashes. Maxwell is a different beast and Pascal will be even smaller so expect more of this.
 
My old 780ti SLI 4770k overvolt custom bios setup still smokes my 980 ti SLI 5820k setup in valley and Haven lol.