• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Hydra Multi-GPU

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
2FA
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
58,151
Hydra Multi-GPU is so ground breaking that no one has seen it actually working in a gaming environment yet, and trust me, we have asked for exactly that. Still PC Per has an article up today that covers the basics of the technology. Instead of tiling, or AFR, or SFR, Lucid’s Hydra chip splits up the workload much differently.

By essentially intercepting the DirectX calls from the game to the graphics cards, the HYDRA Engine is able to intelligently break up the rendering workload rather than just "brute-forcing" alternate frames or split frames as both GPU vendors are doing today in SLI and CrossFire. And according to Lucid all of this is done with virtually no CPU overhead and no latency compared to standard single GPU rendering.
Click to expand...

From what we can tell, a card would have to be built with Lucid’s Hydra chip much like we see the PCIe bridge chip being used on “X2” ATI video cards. Or Lucid is saying you could build motherboards with a Lucid chip down on them as well. Still all guesses here at Lucid is being pretty vague about the whole thing and we have not seen it actually working.
The HYDRA Engine by Lucid is a patented system-on-a-chip designed to boost graphic performance in any multi-GPU environment, from mainstream to the most complex. Placed between a PC's chipset and GPUs, the HYDRA Engine smartly directs graphic processing traffic between the GPUs, using several intelligent parallelization algorithms. The result? Lower costs, better graphics, more responsiveness, and more power and fun for you - even with the most complex 3D scenes, animations or car chases frenetically flashing across your screen.
Click to expand...
We'll soon have more to share about HYDRA Engine technology and how it helps harness the true power of multi-GPU computing. Watch for partner announcements and consumer product availability coming in 2009!
Click to expand...
 
And I dunno, when Jon Peddie, the industry's imminent paid mouthpiece, is the only person you can get to say something good, that is not the best endorsement in my eyes.


“Lucid’s technology couldn’t hit the market at a better time,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon, Calif. “We still have far to go to reach total visual realism on the PC, and today’s players are turning to multi-core and parallel processing technologies to solve bottlenecks. Lucid HYDRA technology has the potential to shake up the industry and help elevate the game to the next level.”
Click to expand...

More power to Lucid though. I have a hard time believing that ATI or NV has not already considered this though and simply could not get it to work.
 
Sounds like snake oil to me. If there was a method that Nvidia or ATI thought was gonna be significantly better than AFR, they'd be using it.
 
The one part that truly sounds intriguing is the ability to use this with any GPU.

I understand this to mean that motherboard X can support SLI AND Crossfire! Now that is truly epic.

I certainly hope for this technology to come to fruition but I will maintain my 'show me' attitude.
 
Volkum said:
What do they say when it sounds too good to be true?
Click to expand...

I agree... this sounds like completely reasonable technology, and the reason it hasn't been done yet by either side is simply the complexity when what we've got now "works fine".
 
NKDietrich said:
Sounds like snake oil to me. If there was a method that Nvidia or ATI thought was gonna be significantly better than AFR, they'd be using it.
Click to expand...

I'm sure with the current war both companies have tried to come up with a new remedy to boost multi GPU performance, ATI did with their new chip (hasn't been activated yet), but doesn't exactly boost performance just takes alot of lag related bugs with multi-gpu's on a single pcb out.

I honestly doubt this will work or if it does it will cost a ton of money, totally out weighing the benefits it might bring. If it was possible I'm sure they would of presented a working demo to ATI or Nv trying to get sponsorship for it or the other way around with one of the other companies bragging about the rights.
 
Thew problem with distributing rendering among arbitrary GPUs from arbitrary vendors is that that differnt GPUs generally don't render video the same way. What will that mean for image quality and consistency?

I think their solution would work with canned content tuned for theird solution but "just work" like CF or with special driver support like SLI? Are game vendors going to make the effort to ensure their titles look good on this setup? Probably not.
 
Well lets see.

Intel couldn't get NVIDIA to license SLI to them.

Hydra press releases everywhere.

NVIDIA licenses SLI to them.

If I were a tin foil hat type, i'd knwo where I'd look for the source of funding forr these press releases.
 
Well... if you know a certain directx call takes a certain amount of GPU power, you should be able to intercept each and every call and send it where you want it when you want it.

Sounds to me like they are working with known facts and that it should be doable.

A seperate chip to handle the workload of deciding where the calls should go sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top