LUCID HYDRA 200: Worth Waiting or NOT?

ata786rz

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May 20, 2009
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Is Lucid Hydra 200 based MSI Motherboard going to give better performance than Crossfire or SLI? Or it is just another marketing effort?
 

jvroig

Platinum Member
Nov 4, 2009
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Perhaps not better performance (although they did promise that, but let's just chalk that up to marketing), but for other reasons, it's still a win even if it delivers poorer scaling than the official ATi/nVidia solutions:

1. You can crossfire/SLI with two cards that don't have to be the same model. For example, you can't SLI your old 9800GT with your newer GT285, But that can work in Hydra.
2. You can even mix ATi with nVidia cards. For example, you have a GTX260. You jumped on the ATi 5xxx bandwagon and got yourself a 5870 (lucky you). You don't have to throw you GTX260 away. You can use them both in Hydra.
 

Corsairs

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Feb 28, 2005
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While I'm also excited about the Lucid Hydra, it's worth noting that we really don't have any ETA on this. Who knows how long it's going to take for MSI to get their Big Bang Fuzion out the door? Personally speaking, I'd find it hard to justify waiting for a technology that lacks even a semi-solid release window, no matter how nifty it may be (and the Hydra most certainly would be nifty to have).
 

jvroig

Platinum Member
Nov 4, 2009
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While I'm also excited about the Lucid Hydra, it's worth noting that we really don't have any ETA on this.
Yeah, there's also that. They kinda pulled a fast one on us with that counter webpage.
 

ata786rz

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May 20, 2009
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Thanks guys. But do you think that SLI or Crossfire employs some sort of load balancing? What I know is that they either use different card for different frames or divide the frame into smaller segments. That is not actually load balancing but considering that different frames will not be vastly different, it can be considered as one. But LUCID HYDRA 200 promises TRUE LOAD BALANCING decided at a very low level. Do you really think the performance will be lower as well? Because if they really do what they advertise, it SHOULD TECHNICALLY and THEORETICALLY achieve better performance.
 

Absolution75

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
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IMO This product is a scam. How does a random company have this magical chip that scales multi gpu solutions linearly? nVidia can't even make SLI even close to linear in a bunch of games, but lucid, a company without nearly as much intimate knowledge of how SLI works (compared to nVidia. . . who made the thing. . . ) can?

It is just marketing bs. IMO its probably the equivilent of the nF200 chip. . . Who cares if you can run an AMD+nVidia card in tandom. SLI and XFire are buggy enough without another driver. . .


The advent of SLI on most P55 boards makes this pointless.
 

lavaheadache

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2005
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IMO This product is a scam. How does a random company have this magical chip that scales multi gpu solutions linearly? nVidia can't even make SLI even close to linear in a bunch of games, but lucid, a company without nearly as much intimate knowledge of how SLI works (compared to nVidia. . . who made the thing. . . ) can?

It is just marketing bs. IMO its probably the equivilent of the nF200 chip. . . Who cares if you can run an AMD+nVidia card in tandom. SLI and XFire are buggy enough without another driver. . .


The advent of SLI on most P55 boards makes this pointless.

Crossfire and Sli are overly buggy? That is news to me and I've used very current versions of both
 

Absolution75

Senior member
Dec 3, 2007
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Crossfire and Sli are overly buggy? That is news to me and I've used very current versions of both

Buggy is fairly relative. . . I tend to read driver release notes and SLI/CrossFire tend to make up the majority of the fixes. . . So IMO, are buggy.

Sure, the bugs get patched, but not everyone updates their drivers once a month. Most people I know tend to do it maybe twice a year. . .
 

ata786rz

Member
May 20, 2009
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Thanks. Then the VERDICT for this thread can be:
LUCID HYDRA 200 is another technology that may do just what they say. But that is questionable as nVidia would LOVE to improve upon there SLI performance and they being a pro is this arena, are not able to do so. So most likely, LUCID HYDRA 200 will not perform better and thus may NOT be worthwhile to WAIT for.