ty_ger07
I don't get the buzz.  He's just a brand name.  I think of him like a department director who has a good camera presence and gets the credit for the department who actually does the work.
EVGA Classified was nothing without Shamino (and I am sure many others) and EVGA Kingpin was nothing without TiN (and I am sure many others).  Kingpin is just a brand.  Who cares?  He's an overclocker, and not even the best overclocker.
 
All hail the corpo! Corpo is back!

B0baganoosh

ty_ger07
 
 
Well, like it or not, it's true.  He's a brand name held up by good engineers.  They will need more than him if they want to perpetuate the brand.

Vince agrees with you to some extent. In the video, he said he would need like two good engineers to work directly with him who do all the CAD design work (I'm guessing one EE, one ME). This setup is pretty common in big companies where there'll be a "Product Manager" or "Project Manager" who takes ownership of the product design, specifications, marketing goals, etc. and then drives the engineers to bring said product to reality. Yes, those engineers do the technical design, but a lot of engineers aren't good at product conceptualization. Some are, though (I like to think I'm one of those lol), but there's a hefty majority that just like to be given specifications/requirements and then they take the idea and turn it into a manufacturable design. A lot of big companies like that type of engineer because they don't ask a lot of questions or try to put their input to things, they just churn out designs as told. Smaller companies (or smaller teams within companies) tend to like the more creative engineers who will take it upon themselves to come up with more of the product concept because then they don't have to also have a product manager for every product/project.
 
At the end of the day, yes, "K|ngp|n" is a brand and he's not a design engineer, but he is an extreme enthusiast who has proven that given the resources he can drive product development to produce a series of products that people like. If you don't like them, you don't have to buy them. I fully agree that a good looking card with good overclocking capabilities does not mean it's overall a good product and it needs more to prove that. PNY will also need to show that they can support such a product (because people tend to break them and EVGA had pretty good support for the XOC community) as that's not a market they've previously served. Galax has some great overclocking cards for example, but I have no interest in them because you can't get them easily and there's no support in the US. Some people in the US still go through the trouble to get them, and that's cool. It's just not for me.
 
As a side question, can you point to any GPU company that gives credit to their design engineers? I have never seen that happen before. I have seen Vince grab the EVGA motherboard guys and put them on the camera when GN came over to give them credit for the awesome motherboard BIOS work they were doing (his words). So...while he doesn't always name them, I have actually seen him give credit to the engineers for what they do, unlike any other company out there.

09973
I had nothing but bad experiences with PNY support. I feel they are worse then Asus just for the fact that Asus fixes my stuff where PNY told me to shove a sock in it. I do have to consider that this was for a 9600GT and a 9600GSO.... so maybe times have changed for them.