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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shin0bi272 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I know thats what I was saying. The technology was supposed to be more worthwhile than this. Plus you cant mix gpus with a regular motherboard so Id have to get another 8800gtx to match mine on my sli supported motherboard. Or if I wanted to go with ati's new card Id have to get 2x5870's ($400ea)and a new crossfire mobo($150) to go crossfire instead. That's more expensive than getting this $350 mobo and adding a 5870 to my 8800gtx. Even if I went with 2 5850's at $300 each its still more expensive than buying this $350 mobo and one 5850. So you see why I really was hoping this tech would work better than it does.This would really do well in the budget mobo market IMO, so that people who didnt want to pay 300+ dollars for a motherboard then buy two video cards could use an old card and get better performance than they would have by just getting the low end mobo and using their old gpu.
If they can get it to be truly scalar (or close to it) like they originally claimed it would be then maybe some other motherboard makers will pick it up but if they dont get it fixed it will end up falling by the wayside as a tech that missed its time (sort of like the hardware physx cards).
Then again the crossfire 5850 in the call of juarez test got nearly scalar performance increases itself which is sort of new isnt it? isnt it the norm for crossfire and sli setups to do 40-50% better than single cards not 94%? Could just be my erroneous recollection but I dont recall near perfect doubling of fps with sli or crossfire before.
GourdFreeMan - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
It is an amazing technological feat that they got this working at all, but in the few games in which it does work properly the performance is frankly terrible. Look at what happens when you pair a 5850 and a GTX280 -- equal or worse performance to a 5850 by itself, when theoretically you should get a ~75% gain over a single card.FATCamaro - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
This technology had fail written all over it. They unleashed a big sack of fail...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 mobochizow - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Sadly, I think Lucid missed their window of opportunity as the need for Hydra largely evaporated with X58 and certainly P55's mainstream launch, offering support for both CF and SLI on the same platform. The only real hope for Hydra was the prospect of vendor-agnostic multi-GPU with better-than-AFR scaling.Those lofty goals seem to be unrealistic now that we've seen the tech, and with its current slew of problems and its incredibly high price tag, I just don't see the technology gaining any significant traction over the established, supported multi-GPU AFR methods.
The article touched on many of the key problems early on, but never really drilled down on them, hopefully we'll see more on this in the next installment, especially IQ and latency:
Guru3D did an extensive review as well and found CF scaled significantly better than Hydra without fail. Add in the various vendor-specific feature compatibility questions and an additional layer of driver profiles that need to be supported and synchronized between potentially 3 parties (Nvidia, ATI sync'd to each Lucid release) and you've got yourself a real nightmare from an end-user perspective.
I'm impressed they got their core technology to work, I was highly skeptical in that regard, but I don't think we'll be hearing too much about this technology going forward. Its too expensive, too overly complicated and suffers from poor performance and compatibility. I don't see the situation improving any time soon and its clearly going to be an uphill struggle to get their drivers/profiles in order with both older titles and new releases.
sheh - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I agree. It's interesting from a technical standpoint but not many would want to go through all the fuss of SLI/CF (noise, heat, power) plus having to worry about the compatiblity of two or three sets of drivers at the same time. And that's assuming costs weren't high, and performance was better.I suspect in 1-2 years NV or ATI will be buying this company.
(I'm somewhat surprised even SLI/CF exists, but maybe the development costs aren't too high or it's the bragging rights. :))
chizow - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Not so sure about that, Intel has actually been pumping venture capital into Lucid for years, so I'm sure they're significantly vested in their future at this point. I actually felt Lucid's Hydra was going to serve as Intel's CF/SLI answer not so much as a straight performance alternative, but rather a vessel to make Larrabee look not so....underwhelming.
Think about it, sell a Larrabee for $200-$300 that on its own, is a terrible 3D rasterizer and pair it up with an established, competent GPU from Nvidia or ATI and you'd actually get respectable gaming results. Now that Larrabee has been scrapped for the foreseeable future, I'd say Intel's financial backing and plans for Hydra are also in flux. As it is now, Hydra is in direct competition with the PCIe controllers they provide for little added cost that support both SLI and CF natively (licensing fee needed for SLI). In comparison, the Hydra 200 chip reportedly costs an additional $80!
TemjinGold - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I think the issue I see is that X-mode will most commonly be used by people looking to save a few bucks when upgrading by combining the card they already have with a new one they buy. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that this is the same crowd that would shell out $350 for a mobo. That just leaves A and N modes, which the Hydra currently loses horribly to CF/SLI.If the Hydra was put on a cheap mobo, I might see where it could be appealing. But someone who spends $350 on a mobo will most likely just shell out for 2-3 new gfx cards at the same time rather than going "gee, I could put this $50 to use if I reuse my old video card."
AznBoi36 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
Right on. If I were to spend that much on a mobo, I wouldn't be thinking about saving some money by using an old video card, and in no way would I be mis-matching cards anyway. Seeing all this performance issues, I wonder how 3-way would be like...ExarKun333 - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
3-way would be ideal. ;)