First Thoughts
As we’ll be following up on this article with a look at more games, image quality, and hopefully some feedback from MSI and Lucid, let’s stick with some first thoughts rather than some final thoughts.
To Lucid’s credit they have demonstrated the viability of their technology. They are successfully splitting up frames through API interception, compositing them, and spitting out a final frame. We don’t have any doubts that the technology can work, otherwise we wouldn’t have any successes to talk about today.
But what they have is clearly not enough. Too many “supported” games have issues and too many graphically intensive games that would be a good match for the Fuzion board are unsupported. Crysis may not be a high-scoring or widely-purchased game, but what else is there that a single 5800-series card can’t handle on its own? The ability for the Hydra technology to work on lighter games like Portal and Lego Indiana Jones is basically lost on a Fuzion board.
In our limited testing, there is little else we can say besides the fact that the Hydra software needs more development. Lucid needs to squash the graphical corruption and the crashes, and then they need to work on getting more product-appropriate games supported. More performance is almost a must, but at this point it would be a bigger sign of progress if the glitches went away first.
MSI is taking a big risk on Lucid and the Hydra here, but they themselves have also stumbled on their attempt to get into the high-end motherboard business. While this is not a motherboard review, we can’t wrap our heads around the fact that the Fuzion doesn’t support SLI. If a $350 motherboard doesn’t support SLI, what will? If you buy this board and the Hydra technology doesn’t pan out, you’re effectively limited to AMD cards if you still want to go the multi-GPU route, and that’s a risk that can’t be ignored.
Ultimately, I’m reminded a great deal of the PhysX launch. We have a product that could significantly impact PC gaming, costs a decent chunk of change (Anand estimates the Hydra 200 chip in the Fuzion to run at $80), and at launch doesn’t do enough to justify itself. As we have said since the Hydra announcement, the technology has a great deal of promise – but right now it’s not delivering on that promise.
As with any kind of promising technology that can shake things up as much as the Hydra can, we’re hopeful for the future, but you can’t ignore the present or the path to the future.
We’ll have more on the Lucid Hydra next week in Part 2 of our review.
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liveonc - Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - link
Hydra is still pretty raw, but can it be the One Chip to rule them all, One Chip to find them, One Chip to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie? CPU, GPU, GPGPU wars comming to a standstill, where it doesn't matter if you use an Intel, AMD, Nvidia or Ati.Focher - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - link
I think people should really give Lucid their due in regards to proving the underlying concept - that it is feasible to deliver mixed frame rendering in real time. Granted, the technology still seems immature but one has to remember that AMD and NVIDIA have both rejected the approach at this point.I'm still prepared to wait and see how the technology - and not just the current approach from Lucid - evolves. For example, perhaps AMD and NVIDIA will put some RnD efforts into multi-GPU cards that are better equipped at mixed frame rendering. Having it all on the same board could alleviate some of the bottlenecks.
Baron Fel - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link
Crysis has a 91 at Metacritic and sold millions.Just wanted to point that out.
x86 64 - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
I thought the Hydra didn't do SLI\CF through software? I thought that was one of the main benefits of Hydra, no software profiles were needed. The preliminary results you guys posted are less than impressive. Not to sound like a pessimist but I figured it was too good to be true.Focher - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - link
I think the term "profiles" isn't appropriate, as the review suggests it's more of a whitelist than any type of profile with customized settings for the specific game.prophet001 - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
The implications of this technology are tremendous. I'm rather surprised at people brushing it off. It is fledgling and will obviously need some work but they will be able to do some really neat things once this matures. I'm thinking GPU farm via external PCI-E.hyvonen - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
"We’ll start with Call of Juarez, which is one of the Hydra’s better titles. With our 5850s in Crossfire, we get 94fps, which is just less than double the performance of a single 5850 (49.5)."Don't mean "... we get 94fps, which is more than double the performance of a single 5850 (49.5)."
Or, on other words, WFT happened - how do you get more than double the performance with CF?!?!? Something got messed up in your test here, bro.
Veerappan - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
Read it again... He's saying that the 94fps that they got is just slightly LESS THAN double 49.5 fps. So if a single 5850 gets 49.5 fps, double that is 99 fps.They got 94 fps, which is just a little bit less than 99.
jmurbank - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
To me Lucid got something going but they should have done it differently. If they created the Hydra chip to be an on-board graphics chip and dispatcher, things will be different. Right now all they have is a dispatcher chip that uses a discrete graphics card to output video which makes it have multiple bottlenecks. It will be better if the Hydra output the graphics on on its own through its own display port while all the processing is done by the discrete graphics cards using stream processing technology like CAL (ATI) and CUDA (nVidia).Of course bad drivers screws up everything. Have look at ATI's history. ATI still makes poor software, but people do not mind. It seems people care more about performance than reliable and stable drivers. I care more about reliable and stable drivers, so it screws up my day if my computer crashes because of a driver.
beginner99 - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
The worst thing you can do is promise stuff you can't deliver. it's sad. After these first benchmark, the tech will just have a bad reputation even if it will get better over time. Intel way would have been better. Just don't release it at all if it's an underperformer.I do see that it must we extremly complex to get this running at all. So it's actually quite an achievment but it's similar to cars. Combustion engines have been optimized during the last 100 years. No wonder no new technology can compete.
Maybe in 1-2 years this will be usable. If lucid is still alive then...Don't believe many will buy this board.
I also was rather suprised about CF. Used to be quite bad too as I remember? Probably due to a driver update? And how nows what nvidia or ATI is doing in there drivers. I assume they could put in stuff to cripple hydra on purpose.