[XAslanX]

Quote:

MSI rolled out two of its performance Lucid Hydra based motherboards it's been working on, the socket LGA1156 P55A Fuzion and socket AM3 870A Fuzion. The P55A Fuzion uses a 10-phase CPU VRM that makes use of high-C capacitors, Lotes-made socket, two-phase VRM for the memory, and expansion slots which include two PCI-E 2.0 x16 (full-bandwidth), two PCI-E x1, and two PCI. The PCI-E x16 slots are wired to the Lucid Hydra 200 chip that gives each graphics card full interface bandwidth, and offers vendor-neutral multi-GPU pairing. Users can pair NVIDIA graphics cards with ATI, and can also mix and match different GPUs. Connectivity features include two SATA 6 Gb/s ports, six SATA 3 Gb/s, USB 3.0, 8-channel audio, and gigabit Ethernet.

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[MahiMahiMahi]

Those power connectors sure are different. I just wanted to note that the 870 will be ~160 dollars and the p55A will run ~190 dollars.

 

[Varjo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MahiMahiMahi Those power connectors sure are different. I just wanted to note that the 870 will be ~160 dollars and the p55A will run ~190 dollars.

Wow, those are actually pretty good prices. This board is very tempting, I am still a bit wary of lucid though. I feel like it may need another 6 months or so to mature.

 

[brkbeatjunkie]

So this looks very neat... I found last night online and have been looking for more information about this board.

How versatile is the multi gpu chipset? Can you really pair a 460 and 470 or a ati and nvidia card together? Does anyone know if this is for real? I wonder what the increase in performance would be using way different cards.

 

[Cindex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brkbeatjunkie I wonder what the increase in performance would be using way different cards.

I'm very curious also. That'd be quite strange to see a 470 working together with a 5870 or something.

 

[Starbuck5000]

Tiny VRM heatsinks

 

[darklink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Varjo Wow, those are actually pretty good prices. This board is very tempting, I am still a bit wary of lucid though. I feel like it may need another 6 months or so to mature.

The price for the 870 chipset seems to be a bit much. Yeah there is the possibility of running multi-GPU setups with nVidia and/or ATI cards, it just seems expensive. You can pick up an 890FX board for about the same price. I know the limiting factor on that would be crossfire only, but the peformance (I would think) would be better overall.

 

[Satans_Hell]

Hmm, so how does this work?
Do you use a driver for the Hydra chip and then install nVidia/ATI drivers for SLI/XFire or does the Hydra driver take care of everything....

More interested in SLI on AMD chipsets.

 

[darklink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satans_Hell Hmm, so how does this work? Do you use a driver for the Hydra chip and then install nVidia/ATI drivers for SLI/XFire or does the Hydra driver take care of everything.... More interested in SLI on AMD chipsets.

When using the hydra chip, its technically not SLI or crossfire. From what I remember when reading up on the hydra, all information to be processed by the GPUs is first sent to and processed by the hydra chip. The chip then desides which GPU to delegate a particular task to. That corresponding GPU then processes the information and feeds it back to the hydra chip (at the same time the second GPU is doing the same thing). The hydra chip then compiles the data received from both GPUs.

EDIT: You would need a driver for the hydra chip as well as for whatever GPUs you are running.

 

[Backwoods166]

Lucid Hydra is a very interesting idea. I am so hoping it works out. Have not been super impressed yet but, it is young...

 

[Satans_Hell]

Quote:

Originally Posted by darklink When using the hydra chip, its technically not SLI or crossfire. From what I remember when reading up on the hydra, all information to be processed by the GPUs is first sent to and processed by the hydra chip. The chip then desides which GPU to delegate a particular task to. That corresponding GPU then processes the information and feeds it back to the hydra chip (at the same time the second GPU is doing the same thing). The hydra chip then compiles the data received from both GPUs. EDIT: You would need a driver for the hydra chip as well as for whatever GPUs you are running.

Thanks for clearing this up