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So, Lucid's Hydra....

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Did it ever go anywhere?

Did it wind up being useable with newer drivers?

Is anyone here using one?
 
when reading reviews of hydra boards, i noticed that the hydra chip really heated up the northbridge or whatever heatsink was on the hydra chip (the 870a Fuzion specifically). I don't know too many people with hydra boards, but I'd own one if I could afford it.
 
I'd like to see more GPU's with the lucid hydra chip. It makes more sense than putting it on the motherboard, assuming it doesn't drive the GPU cost up considerably.
 
^ It would definitely drive costs up, and not a lot of people would want to pay extra for it.
 
Asus Crosshair IV Extreme uses Lucid's Hydra chip. MSI motherboards use the Hydra chip. The MSI 870A Fuzion I know does, and I believe Gigabyte motherboards may use them in the future. I don't think the Lucid Hydra chip is dead yet.
 
Nightbird said:
It's dead. Right?
Click to expand...

The driver support is still bad and the numbers are still under Crossfire/SLI numbers. They promised much better driver support and performance but so far haven't done either.

With only 1 or 2 mobo's supporting it and a possible third its all but dead at this point.
 
Godmachine said:
The driver support is still bad and the numbers are still under Crossfire/SLI numbers. They promised much better driver support and performance but so far haven't done either.

With only 1 or 2 mobo's supporting it and a possible third its all but dead at this point.
Click to expand...

Asus Crosshair IV Formula
Asus Crosshair IV Extreme
MSI's Big Bang P55 motherboard
MSI 870A Fuzion
ECS P67H2-A Black Extreme

MSI 870A FUZION Lucid Hydralogix Multi GPU 3DMark Vantage Demo Linus Tech Tips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rMMp9LljU
 
It never went far because of poor scaling with multiple GPUs. The idea itself has so much potential if the efficiency was higher. Even if it only worked for the same graphic cards but let you run more of them in parallel that would be an epic win.

Radeon HD 4870 Quad CrossfireX anyone?
 
Think about an EVGA SR-2 with Hydra with 7 slots. If Hydra was able to do more than 4 GPUs.. OMG. 7 water cooled GTX 580s in a multi-GPU config. 7680x3200 with 8xSSAA on highest quality settings in Crysis appeal to anyone?

/dream
 
I think it was really just a timing thing. When the chip was developed, crossfire and sli scaling was pretty poor and the Hydra's promise to go from ~60% to ~85% was very appealing. Unfortunately now that the chip is on the market, Nvidia and ATI have achieved 90%+ scaling on their latest gen of chips. Add in the fact that sli and crossfire are natively supported in drivers and the business case for the Hydra has really evaporated.
 
R-Type said:
I think it was really just a timing thing. When the chip was developed, crossfire and sli scaling was pretty poor and the Hydra's promise to go from ~60% to ~85% was very appealing. Unfortunately now that the chip is on the market, Nvidia and ATI have achieved 90%+ scaling on their latest gen of chips. Add in the fact that sli and crossfire are natively supported in drivers and the business case for the Hydra has really evaporated.
Click to expand...

This.

Also, and this is just a nagging suspicion, I assume AMD/Nvidia are not fans of hydra. It wouldn't surprise me if they tried to make life hard for lucid.
 
R-type, you're very right : when it came out, it was very interesting because of the failures of sli/xfire. Maybe it was also a PR problem... No enough cash to advertise compared to AMD and Nvidia.
 
Well, the only really interesting question for me with regards to Hydra is if it also uses the AFR mode, i.e. still features microstutter. If they've somehow managed to work around that problem, then I might be inclined to lose out a few % of scaling. Once and if it gets better, that is.
 
Raap said:
Well, the only really interesting question for me with regards to Hydra is if it also uses the AFR mode, i.e. still features microstutter.
Click to expand...
No, it doesn't use AFR. What it does is more like SFR, but it can divide the frame around on-screen elements rather than just blindly slicing it in half. There are some pictures of it here.
 
bore_u2_death said:
It never went far because of poor scaling with multiple GPUs. The idea itself has so much potential if the efficiency was higher. Even if it only worked for the same graphic cards but let you run more of them in parallel that would be an epic win.

Radeon HD 4870 Quad CrossfireX anyone?
Click to expand...

The scaling problem may have been because the GPU being used wasn't compatible with the Hydra drivers. The Lucid site states it's only compatible with ATI 4xxx and 5xxx GPU and NVIDIA 9xxx and 2xxx.
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
No, it doesn't use AFR. What it does is more like SFR, but it can divide the frame around on-screen elements rather than just blindly slicing it in half. There are some pictures of it here.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link, looks like it can do several things:
Yes, it can and will sometimes run standard split frame rendering - this is very efficient for per-pixel processing heavy workloads.
Click to expand...

Really would have been great had they gotten it to work properly, without it being dependent on updating drivers for new games and such. If they could manage 80% or so of ATI/Nvidia's scaling but without the microstutter and performance inconsistencies from game to game, I'd much rather go that route that regular CFX/SLI.
 
eddieck said:
Think about an EVGA SR-2 with Hydra with 7 slots. If Hydra was able to do more than 4 GPUs.. OMG. 7 water cooled GTX 580s in a multi-GPU config. 7680x3200 with 8xSSAA on highest quality settings in Crysis appeal to anyone?

/dream
Click to expand...

And a dream it shall be, because even if the Hydra chip supported more than 4 GPUs you'd still be limited to four because of the width of the cards (double slot).
 
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