Lucid Hydra 200

[Defeat]

What are your thoughts on this? Anyone planning buying a mobo with the chip on it when it's released?

Links for those of you who don't know or haven't read about it:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3646

http://vimeo.com/6700209

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...id-hydra-200-better-than-crossfire2c-sli.aspx

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1093/1/

 

[dragonfliet]

It sounds neat, but lets see how it actually works. I don't mean, well, it works, I mean does it work well enough to justify the premium it will fetch. If it does: wonderful, otherwise I'll pass as I'm not an SLI person anyways.

~Jason

 

[Rambowjo]

If this actually works, it's very very impressive. Imagine if the same concept could be applied to multi-CPU setups. Heck, the idea of running an ATI and Nvidia card in parallel is wonderful. If this turns out to be for real, I'll probably buy one of these mobos the next time I upgrade.

 

[dragonfliet]

Bump. So they've released some boards for testing and it seems completely awesome. They're not at manufacturing yet and it isn't perfect, but still you can swap in a non-identical card (ie: that old, but decent GFX card you have lying aroun when you upgrade) and get a performance boost. Hell yes.

~Jason

 

[Slainchild]

If you have enough money to buy into this stuff, chances are you're going to buy two high-end videocards anyway. In which case, why not just go for a normal SLI board?

 

[dragonfliet]

If you have enough money to buy into this stuff, chances are you're going to buy two high-end videocards anyway. In which case, why not just go for a normal SLI board?

I never have the money to buy two high powered cards at the same time and if I upgrade halfway through my computer needing a full overhaul, by that point buying a second card of what I had previously for SLI would result in a less powerful rig than simply buying a moderately priced card of the new generation. Pricing isn't released yet but I imagine it's a relatively small premium over current SLI boards (which are very, very common by now). People like me would benefit immensely in that I could call into service my old card to perform some extra lifting with my 9800gt, which can be the difference between steadily above 30fps and occassional, yet annoying, drops below.

~Jason

 

[Soggy_Popcorn]

I never have the money to buy two high powered cards at the same time and if I upgrade halfway through my computer needing a full overhaul, by that point buying a second card of what I had previously for SLI would result in a less powerful rig than simply buying a moderately priced card of the new generation. Pricing isn't released yet but I imagine it's a relatively small premium over current SLI boards (which are very, very common by now). People like me would benefit immensely in that I could call into service my old card to perform some extra lifting with my 9800gt, which can be the difference between steadily above 30fps and occassional, yet annoying, drops below.

~Jason

Unfortunately, the boards are initially going to be super expensive (new tech is always like that for early adopters) and it will be at least a year or two before it's integrated to the degree we want.

 

[dragonfliet]

Unfortunately, the boards are initially going to be super expensive (new tech is always like that for early adopters) and it will be at least a year or two before it's integrated to the degree we want.

We'll see how bad it is when it's released, but yeah, at first it will be killer. That's fine. An additional note is that when this sucker hits you can bet your ass that you'll see Nvidia and ATI at least allowing for sli configurations between disparate (but not across the spectrum from nvidia to ati) cards. This is the sort of innovation that makes the companies have to take note and catch up which benefits the consumer.

~Jason

 

[tomcat ha]

ATI is supposed to be supportive of this.

Nvidia has been talking about blocking this from the driver level.

 

[Syri]

Of course Nvidia will want to block it, it'd allow a high end ATI card to effectively have access to physX and Cuda just from slotting in a budget nvidia card. Same reason ATI are supportive of it
Seems interesting, for the reason I noted above if nothing else. The price point will be the main decider if it takes off or not though, as really, the people that'd benefit the most are budget system builders, who upgrade one bit at a time and want to re-use some of their old components to give the new ones a boost. If it's priced at the enthusiast, it won't take off as most of them will just have 2 of the same already in sli or crossfire.

 

[Rambowjo]

Either way, it's really impressive that they managed to do it. I have an old 8800 GTS lying around, which I thought was broken, but I tested it the other day, and it seems to be working. If I could throw that into my system along with my 260GTX, that'd be awesome

 

[tomcat ha]

Also considering the drivers arent finished i think that it already delivers good scaling, this also allows you to always have good performance no matter what brand the game/engine is optimized for.