Lucid "Hydra" Graphics Tech

[Xion X2]

Lucid's IDF demos were running on alpha silicon, but the company has just gotten final silicon back and says it's on track to deliver products during the first half of 2009.

:D !

[Lfctony]

Imagine inserting one of these babies into you motherboard and have it perform better than SLI/Crossfire... Now that would be great!

[walterman]

I think that we'll need new mobos. The chip can be used in cards with 2 gpus too (like a replacement of the PLX chip).

I'm not sure yet, but i think that the card will need a lot of bandwidth to the gpus, to blend the pixels from both cards. So, bye PCIe x1 Hydra card :(

[Lfctony]

I think that we'll need new mobos. The chip can be used in cards with 2 gpus too (like a replacement of the PLX chip).

I'm not sure yet, but i think that the card will need a lot of bandwidth to the gpus, to blend the pixels from both cards. So, bye PCIe x1 Hydra card :(

Depending on how good the final hardware is, it might be worth it...

[DansFace]

I'm just as excited as you guys are about this...
but it just sounds WAY to good to be true

this would be a revolution for PC gaming

[Xion X2]

I'm just as excited as you guys are about this...
but it just sounds WAY to good to be true

That's the only reason I'm not completely flipping out about this right now.. because it DOES seem too good to be true. Especially if they already have final silicon and it'll be on the market in 1st-2nd Qtr of '09!

Imagine near perfect scaling for Crossfire/SLI on nearly every title out there. Imagine 2 4870X2s with near-perfect 4x scaling on Crysis-- Oh my! :D :D :D

this would be a revolution for PC gaming

Agreed.

If this thing comes out, I'm buying it.

[qube]

and nvidia bought it and good night hydra

[walterman]

Yeah, i fear that too, but Intel is behind the Hydra too, so, i think that it will survive.

[DansFace]

Do you even need a bridge for the graphics card?

lol...
i'm almost holding back on buying a mobo for this tech

[walterman]

You could put the hydra chip in a dual card like the GX2 or X2, and it would distribute the load between the 2 gpus, much better than the actual multigpu rendering techinques (AFR/SFR/...). The performance would be linear with the number of gpus, if the hydra technology works as expected, of course. Maybe it could be possible to use 2x GX2/X2 style cards, without a SLI/CF mobo, as long as the mobo has the 2 slots to plug the cards. This last idea is really interesting, cause it might work in our actual mobos :)

[Xion X2]

and nvidia bought it and good night hydra

Nvidia can't outbid Intel. And Intel is funding the project.

[blackmagma]

I am not sure mixing Nvidia and ATI cards are possible - it does not say that in the Lucid wen site www.lucidlogix.com

[Xion X2]

The technology allows it; the Vista drivers for ATI/Nvidia don't.

[nekrosoft13]

Nvidia can't outbid Intel. And Intel is funding the project.

don't you think this could un-competive, if intel uses that with their card and slowly drives out nvidia and ati out of video card market

i would say they should share this tech between all 3 companies.

[Heinz68]

TECHGAGE (http://techgage.com/article/lucid_hydra_engine_multi-gpu_technology/1) has good read article about the HYDRA Technology
So, how do the multiple GPUs connected to a HYDRA ASIC relate to the host system? The Lucid HYDRA Engine is capable of bringing together dissimilar cards to work on rendering tasks - however, there is one limitation: All GPUs must be able to share the same software driver. That means you can forget mixing and matching cards with ATI and NVIDIA GPUs in the same HYDRA configuration. Cards from both makers can theoretically be present in the same system, however - you could have a HYDRA array of ATI Radeon HD 4870s handling the video rendering, with a low-end NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT handling PhysX acceleration, for example.

[DansFace]

"Our goal is to make photorealistic graphics mainstream and affordable for everyone on graphics-enabled platforms, including PCs, notebooks and gaming consoles. Consumers and manufacturers can deploy the HYDRA Engine:

* On motherboards
* As an add-in board

We'll soon have more to share about HYDRA Engine technology and how it helps harness the true power of multi-GPU computing. Watch for partner announcements and consumer product availability coming in 2009!"

Does that mean the Hydra chip could possibly come on a PCI express card?! Some of us wouldn't even need to upgrade are motherboards.....

to good to be true

[duffy_chucky]

who said SGI guru?? uhu !