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
krneki457 - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
Sorry Ryan just noticed you wrote the article. Well it was just an idea how to get at least some SLI results with as little hassle as possible. Presuming Hydra can be turned off to work only as PCIe bridge, than this ought to work.chizow - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Have you tried flashing the Trinergy BIOS for SLI support? It might kill off Hydra capabilities in the meantime and deprecate the Hydra 200 to its basest form, a PCIe controller but for purposes of measuring N-mode performance that should suffice. The other alternative would be to simply use the Trinergy with SLI results as a plug-in doppelganger since it is identical to the Fuzion, save for the NF200 vs. Hydra 200 serving as PCIe switches.jabber - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I think it has some promise. I think the ultimate aim is to be able to 'cobble' together a couple of GPUs of similar capability, have them work efficiently together and not have to worry about profiles. The profiles could just be handled seamlessly in the background.If they can push towards that then I'll give them the time.
chizow - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
The technology does still rely on profiles though. You don't need to set-up game specific profiles like with Nvidia, even if that kind of granularity is probably the best option, your choices are limited to a handful of somewhat generic performance/optimization profiles provided by Lucid.The scariest part of it all is that these profiles will rely on specific profiles/drivers from both Nvidia and AMD too. I'm pretty sure its covered in this article, but its covered for sure in Guru3D's write-up. Hydra only plans to release updates *QUARTERLY* and those updates will only support specific drivers from Nvidia and ATI.
Obviously, depending on Lucid's turnaround time, you're looking at signficant delays in their compatibilities with Nvidia/ATI, but you're also looking at potentially 3 months before an update for an Nvidia/ATI driver that supports a newer game you're interested in playing. Just way too many moving parts, added complexity and reliance on drivers/profiles, all for a solution that performs worst and costs more than the established AFR solutions.
danger22 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
maybe the amd 5000 cards are to new to have support for hyrda? what about trying some older lower end cards? just for interest... i know you wouldn't put them in a $350 mobovol7ron - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I like the way this technology is headed.Everyone is saying "fail" and maybe they're right because they want more from the release, but I think this still has potential. I would say either, keep the funding going, or open it up to the community at large to hopefully adopt/improve.
The main thing is that down the road this will be cheaper, faster, better. When SSDs came out stuttering, people were also saying "fail."
shin0bi272 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I know how you feel but their original claim was scalar performance with a 7watt chip on the mobo. It's not even as good as standard crossfire (and probably not even standard sli) so that's what's prompting the fail comments. Instead of getting 75fps on call of juarez with a pair of 5850's they should be getting 99 or 100 according to their original claim. Dont get me wrong it functions and for a chip thats literally a couple of months old (maybe 24 since its announcement) thats great but the entire point of hydra was to do it better out of the box than the card makers were doing it.shin0bi272 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I had high hopes for this technology but alas it appears it is just not meant to be. Maybe its the single pci-e 16x lane they are using to try to feed 2 pci-e 2.0 16x lane video cards... just saying. Would have been nice to be able to keep my 8800gtx and add in a 5870 but oh well.AznBoi36 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Why would you spend $350 on this mobo and then spend another $350 for a 5870, just so you can use your old 800GTX with a minimal gain? You could spend $150 on a CF mobo, plus 2 4890's at $150 each for a total of $350 that would give a 5870 a run for it's money.shin0bi272 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
oh and the reason for the 5850's is because I am really wanting the dx11 capabilities... I could go with 2 4890's and end up paying less yes but it wouldnt be dx11.