Your thoughts on the Hydra 200

My thought is, why? If you can afford to buy a second GPU, why not just buy another one like you already have? If you want to use the excuse that you can't afford to buy another one of the same quality, you can't tell me that if you couple, say a GTX285 with a Radeon 4770, that you're going to gain performance. I just don't see it.
 
Mixing and matching DX9, DX10.X and DX11 cards, just seems like it would be fraught with issues, let alone you needing to always drop one of the cards offline if you need a certain DX mode. The possibility of graphical glitches when dealing with AA and AF modes that each card may handle differently based on each product line/manufacturer. Maybe I'm off in my thinking.. but it just seems like more trouble than its worth. It may be good for older games, but anything newer and I bet you end up seeing issues.
 
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The scaling on the Hydra sounds like it is far better than Crossfire and SLI. And it would allow using multiple cards in the MANY games that still don't take advantage of Crossfire and SLI.

My only problem is it sounds WAY too good to be true. So I'm very skeptical this actually will work as advertised. But before I go to sleep everynight, I say a prayer for it to be real. :)
 
Just seems like this technology would have been more valuable before the current P55/X58 chipsets, as these boards can already do both SLI and Crossfire.

How is performance using two similar cards with the Hydra 200 vs. Native SLI or Native Crossfire?
 
One of the big advantages is the ability to add to your system rather than change it. Use your 4870 1gb with the GT300 you plan to buy; it'll work.

I think that SLI and crossfire are controlled mostly by the drivers too (correct me if I'm wrong here). This is going to be an actual piece of hardware dynamically dishing out the workload. It should be a little speedier.

I'm going to withhold judgment until the tests have been done but I'm cautiously optimistic.
 
Kuromizu said:
I think that SLI and crossfire are controlled mostly by the drivers too (correct me if I'm wrong here). This is going to be an actual piece of hardware dynamically dishing out the workload. It should be a little speedier.
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But current SLI/Crossfire configurations all use bridges to physically link the two cards, whereas this setup seems to stuff everything over PCIe.
 
they may have a bridge, but the software is still what is doing the load-balancing so to speak. supposedly hydra would do that portion of the work on hardware, which is more efficient and should free up all 1% of the CPU currently used to do this.

what im saying basically is that while its nice in theory to get a tiny boost, until I see it in action, working, and proving itself there's a lot of skepticism.
 
i dont know. i dont see either case - a mb coming with cf, sli and lucid hydra, or a mb comig with just hydra. also foresee tons of copyright and patent problems, along with intellectual property rights beefs.
 
I think it's awesome if it works. When I buy a new video card, the old one just sits around and doesn't get used. With a Hydra 200, I could use both cards and get an extra boost. Really, it'd be nice to be running my 4870 and my 8800GTS as opposed to it sitting in a computer downstairs in the basement.

And what, I can sell it for like 50 bucks? I'd rather have the performance.
 
I will be switching to HYDRA as soon as the product is available in whatever form. I'm tired of AFR and all the crap that comes with it. I don't care what it costs.
 
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