Lucid Hydra is alive...

[shabby]

http://www.iopanel.net/forum/thread31404.html

MSI P55 "The Big Bang" is a P55 based motherboard, which hosts the Lucid Hydra chip that will replace the nf200 chip. As you can see in our photos, the Hydra Chip is located between the CPU socket and the first/Upper PCI-Express Slot. As for now we can't tell which one of the versions of the Hydra is placed on the motherboard, and how it performs , but a source inside one of the companies told us that the Hydra Chip is working as planned.

Nice!

 

[alyarb]

yes.

 

[Sylvanas]

I was just about to post this- awesome. MSI have been producing some stellar boards recently, I hope Lucid lives up to the hype

 

[yh125d]

We could use some excitement in the mobo market. All the 1156/1366 "wtf why is intel doing two sockets" hum-drum hopefully will be replaced by "OMG GTX300/5800 and the new i5's are friggin sweeeet"

 

[alyarb]

I only wonder how the hydra will economize with the limited PCIe connectivity of 1156.

 

[faxon]

woot finally it's here (well almost). i'm really glad fry's stocks MSI boards, that's going to be a major selling point if other manufacturers dont step up and do the same as well

ed: alyarb, hydra is a pci-e controller as well as a graphic load balancing chip, so in theory it wouldnt matter how many PCI-e lanes the cpu has to offer if they used the hydra chip for everything graphics related. last i checked, lucid was getting funding from intel as well. would be really interesting if intel could somehow integrate this chip as the defacto controller for all pci-e graphics, and use the lynnfield chip for other things like raid controllers and what not

 

[thilanliyan]

Finally...hopefully it works as originally described.

 

[Tempered81]

I'd like to see a 4870x2 & GTX295 in the same system running crysis with 100% scaling. hahaha!

 

[ItsAlive]

This is probably the reasoning behind Nvidia disabling PhysX when ATI cards are present.

 

[shabby]

Originally posted by: alyarb
I only wonder how the hydra will economize with the limited PCIe connectivity of 1156.

Ya thats that's definitely one of the downfalls of the p55, x8/x8/x4 is all that's available compared to x16/x8/x8 for the x58. Unless the hydra chip starts showing up in x58 mobo's soon due to customer demand? Who knows.

 

[alyarb]

well, the PCIe out of the CPU will hit the hydra chip first, and then the signal apparently is split out to the expansion slots as a dual 16. my only concern that the lucid-nehalem bandwidth of about 8 gig/sec isn't enough to keep two GPUs as occupied as traditional SLI. But on the other hand, it depends entirely on lucid's methods and i know they don't include AFR.

 

[nitromullet]

whoa! I didn't see this one coming (so soon). I can't wait to see benchmarks.

 

[videogames101]

Need benches, so badly....

 

[Denithor]

/popcorn

Settling in for a wait. No one is even releasing i5 benchmarks yet, let alone specific to Hydra performance.

Gonna be an interesting fall, no doubt about it.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Well, if the Lucid Hydra is as good as they touted (which I doubt) then it looks like my Dad will get an early present - He will get my X58 i7 @ 4Ghz and I will be the first in line to purchase the new P55 chipset with one of these... However, I am extremely doubtful that this will live up the hype. I am very hopeful, however.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

/lawn chair

Subscribed

 

[Henrah]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
However, I am extremely doubtful that this will live up the hype. I am very hopeful, however.

I like your mix of being very hopeful whilst also being extremely doubtful. I will try to adopt this myself - it sounds like a winning method ^_^

Edit: So, does this mean that you do not enable SLI/Xfire in their respective control panels? Also, is it still only capable through XP and Win7 due to Vista lacking a dual driver capability?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
Well, if the Lucid Hydra is as good as they touted (which I doubt) then it looks like my Dad will get an early present - He will get my X58 i7 @ 4Ghz and I will be the first in line to purchase the new P55 chipset with one of these... However, I am extremely doubtful that this will live up the hype. I am very hopeful, however.

I'm pretty sure that if Hydra/P55 works out you'll be seeing Hydra/X58 (or maybe X68) systems as well.

 

[alyarb]

at least this release implies that we should see a hydra demo/review as soon as we get the rest of the 1156 stuff. they've sold HPC boards through Elsa and now we see this, so I think you can be pretty sure that the tech is ready on their side. i won't say it's mature until we see data, but it's ready and there shouldn't be problems with availability. If MSI is doing it, I think we can expect asus and gigabyte and foxconn. maybe evga and asrock too. oh yeah, and biostar. what a pity that we probably won't see this on P45.

 

[yh125d]

As much as I hope this is real and successful, I'm kind of worried about the future. What if we have to do benchmarks of like 4890+GTX275, not just 4890 vs GTX275

 

[RussianSensation]

How are they ever going to get a single ATI/NVIDIA driver to work properly?

Cats 9.7 have just been updated to 9.8
Oops my current NV drivers don't work with 9.8!
Let's upgrade to NV's latest. Crap my legacy monitor support just failed because ATI doesn't support my Dell 2408!

Also how do they expect to combine AA/AF when the 2 cards don't produce the same image quality in those settings?

 

[gigahertz20]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
How are they ever going to get a single ATI/NVIDIA driver to work properly?

Cats 9.7 have just been updated to 9.8
Oops my current NV drivers don't work with 9.8!
Let's upgrade to NV's latest. Crap my legacy monitor support just failed because ATI doesn't support my Dell 2408!

Also how do they expect to combine AA/AF when the 2 cards don't produce the same image quality in those settings?

I don't think it will alow 2 video cards from different vendors, so no AMD and Nvidia in the same system. Read this,

What about the possibility of combining an AMD and NVIDIA GPU to work together to render one image?

This was my biggest hope after hearing the initial introduction. Apparently it won't be happening though as the operating system prevents multiple graphics drivers from running 3D applications at the same time. Since a 6800 and 9800 use the same driver from NVIDIA, both may operate in 3D mode without a hassle but combining AMD and NVIDIA just won't work. Let's hope for the future...

From http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=607&type=expert

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
How are they ever going to get a single ATI/NVIDIA driver to work properly?

Cats 9.7 have just been updated to 9.8
Oops my current NV drivers don't work with 9.8!
Let's upgrade to NV's latest. Crap my legacy monitor support just failed because ATI doesn't support my Dell 2408!

Also how do they expect to combine AA/AF when the 2 cards don't produce the same image quality in those settings?

I think part of the beauty (but I may be completely wrong about this) of Lucid is that the cards interface only with the Lucid chip, and appear to the OS as just a single generic GPU, so there shouldn't be any conflicting driver issues

But chances are I'm wrong, been awhile since I read the specifics

 

[gigahertz20]

Damn, MSI is going to have some awesome mobo's when they come out....Lucid Hydra on it and the new OC Genie....very nice.

I WANT BENCHMARKS NOWWWWW!

 

[gigahertz20]

I think part of the beauty (but I may be completely wrong about this) of Lucid is that the cards interface only with the Lucid chip, and appear to the OS as just a single generic GPU, so there shouldn't be any conflicting driver issues

But chances are I'm wrong, been awhile since I read the specifics

I'll copy and paste this comment from another site that I found very informative,


During the Lucid Demo presentation it was stated that ATI + nVidia configurations will NOT work. What Lucid promised is close to 100% scaling for SLI or CF. They specifically mentioned that you won't be able to run different drivers at the same time. All they said was that you can use ANY two or more nVidia OR ANY two or more ATI cards and the end result will be that the system performance numbers will be the SUMS of the performance numbers of the individual cards.

Don't go dreaming about ATI+nVidia LOVE, it won't happen.

Also there is no point in a lawsuit from ATI or nVidia since both CF and SLI are already licensed all for LGA1366 and LGA1156 platforms. I believe it was announced yesterday. It is the reason why you won't see Lucid chips on AMD motherboards too soon. Another reason will be that Intel Capital is one of the key investors in Lucid Tech along side Giza Venture Capital and Genesis Partners. Until you see AMD/ATI on that list, you're out of luck.