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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
cesthree - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
Multi GPU gaming already suffers from drivers that suck. You want the < 3% who actually run multi GPU's to throw HYDRA driver issues into the mix? That doesn't sound appealing, at all, even if I had thousands to throw at the hardware.Fastest Single GPU. Nuff Said.
Although if Lucid can do this, then maybe ATI and Nvidia will get off their dead-bums and fix their drivers already.
Makaveli - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
The major fail is most of the post on this article, its very early silicon with beta drives. And most of you expect it to be beating Xfire and Sli by 30%. When the big guys have had years to tune their drives and they own the hardware. I would like to see where this by next christmas before I pass judgement. Just because you don't see it in front of your face doesn't mean the potential isn't there.Sometimes alittle faith will go along way.
prophet001 - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
i agreeHardin - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
It's a shame the results don't look as promising as we had hoped. Maybe it's just early drivers issues. But it looks like it's too expensive and it's not any better than crossfire as it is. It doesn't even have dx 11 support yet and who knows when they will add it.Jovec - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
With these numbers, I wonder why they allowed them to be posted. They had to know they were getting much worse results with their chips than XF, and the negative publicity isn't going to do them any good. I suppose they didn't want to have another backroom showing, but that doesn't mean they should show at this stage.jnmfox - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
As has been stated the technology is unimpressive, hopefully they can get things fixed. I am just happy to see one of the best RTS ever made in the benchmarks again. CoH should always be part of anandtech's reviews, then I wouldn't need to go to other sites for video card reviews :P.IKeelU - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I was actually hoping AMD would buy this tech and integrate it into their cards/chipsets. Or maybe Intel. As it stands, we have a small company, developing a supposedly GPU-agnostic "graphics helper" that is attempting to supplant what the big players are already doing with proprietary tech. They need support from mobo manufacturers and cooperation from GPU vendors (who have little incentive to help at the moment due to the desire to lock-in users to proprietary stuff). I really, really, want the Hydra to be a success, but the situation is a recipe for failure.nafhan - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
That's the same thing I was thinking through the whole article. The market they are going after is small, very demanding, and completely dependent on other companies. The tech is good, but I have a hard time believing they will ever have the resources to implement it properly. Best case scenario (IMO): AMD buys them once they go bankrupt in a year or so, keeps all the engineers, and integrates the tech into their enthusiast NB/SB.krneki457 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Anand couldn't you use a gtx295 to get approximate gtx280 SLI figures? I read that Hydra doesn't work with dual GPU cards, but couldn't you disable Hydra? You mentioned in the article, that this is possible.As for technology itself, like a lot of comments already mentioned, I really don't see much use in it. Even if it worked properly it would have been more at home in low to mid range motherboards.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I'm going to be seriously looking at using hacked drivers to get SLI results. There are a few ways to add SLI to boards that don't officially support it.It's not the most scientific thing, but it may work to bend the rules this once.