# NVIDIA Shuns Lucid Hydra



## btarunr (Nov 6, 2009)

A promising new technology from LucidLogix, the Hydra, has perhaps hit its biggest roadblock. The Hydra multi-GPU engine allows vendor-neutral and model-neutral GPU performance upscaling, without adhering to proprietary technologies such as NVIDIA SLI or ATI CrossfireX. NVIDIA, which is staring at a bleak future for its chipset division, is licensing the SLI technology to motherboard vendors who want to use it on socket LGA-1366 and LGA-1156 motherboards, since Intel is the only chipset vendor. On other sockets such as LGA-775 and AM3, however, NVIDIA continues to have chipsets that bring with them the incentive of SLI technology support. NVIDIA's licensing deals with motherboard vendors are particularly noteworthy. For socket LGA-1366 motherboards that are based on Intel's X58 Express chipset, NVIDIA charges a fee of US $5 per unit sold, to let it support SLI. Alternatively, motherboard vendors can opt for NVIDIA's nForce 200 bridge chip, which allows vendors to offer full-bandwidth 3-way SLI on some high-end models. For the socket LGA-1156 platform currently driven by Intel's P55 Express chipset, the fee is lower, at US $3 per unit sold.

The Lucid Hydra engine by design is vendor-neutral. It provides a sort of abstraction-layer between the OS and the GPUs, and uses the available graphics processing resources to upscale resulting performance. This effectively kills NVIDIA's cut, as motherboard vendors needn't have the SLI license, and that users of Hydra won't be using SLI or Crossfire anymore. Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue, NVIDIA is working on its drivers to ensure that its GeForce GPUs don't work on platforms that use Hydra. Perhaps this also ensures "quality control, and compatibility", since if the customer isn't satisfied with the quality and performance of Hydra, NVIDIA for one, could end up in the bad books. This could then also kick up warranty issues, and product returns.



MSI has the industry's first release-grade motherboard, the Big Bang Fuzion P55 that uses Hydra to power multiple GPUs, while also allowing users to mix and match various PCI-Express GPUs to suit their needs, something new particularly for NVIDIA users. Earlier expected to be announced around this time, MSI's Big Bang Fuzion, as it is called by its maker, has been indefinitely delayed up to Q1 2010. Apparently to fill the void created by months of hype, MSI rushed in its cousin, a similar-looking motherboard, that uses the nForce 200 chip, to provide 3-way SLI support, called the Big Bang Trinergy P55, which will stay on as the company's top offering for the P55 platform. One can only hope that Hydra doesn't end up stillborn because of corporate strategy by much larger companies.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 6, 2009)

I hope someone has the guts (and resources) to sue NVIDIA for their practices in regards to SLI and PhysX.  Their selfish behavior has to stop, now.

I wonder what Intel is going to do with Larrabee.  Are they going to embrace Hydra or invent something on their own for multi-GPU technology.  Because of Larrabee, I think it will be Intel that decides this feud between NVIDIA and Lucid if Lucid doesn't act on their own behalf.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

This is the kind of thing that drives me away from invidia. Something comes out that is genuinely goood for the consumer, and invidia, rather than biting the bullet and coming up with say, a chipset business that can survive on merits other than the presence of SLI, they set their attention to finding a way to stop their gpus from working with lucid's chip. So tired of this crap.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I hope someone has the guts (and resources) to sue NVIDIA for their practices in regards to SLI and PhysX.  Their selfish behavior has to stop, now.


I don't think it's illegal. Maybe disabling physx on a product designed to run it is, but this, is just like refusing to play at anyone's house but their own...It's funny how dedicated to invidia some people will remain after this too.


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## Laurijan (Nov 6, 2009)

I sooooo want to see mobos with he Hydra multi-GPU engine... edit: and screw NVIDIA


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## pantherx12 (Nov 6, 2009)

Is AMD/ATI were smart they would jump on Lucid/Hydra and help develop maybe even buy them out completely.

That way you can crossfire any cards you like, and SLI is still stuck with like for like multi gpu set ups .


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> I don't think it's illegal. Maybe disabling physx on a product designed to run it is, but this, is just like refusing to play at anyone's house but their own...It's funny how dedicated to invidia some people will remain after this too.


They are shutting out competitors and, in the discreet GPU market and physics acceleration market, they are the majority.  Both are ripe for an anti-trust case.


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## W1zzard (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> They are shutting out competitors and, in the discreet GPU market and physics acceleration market, they are the majority.  Both are ripe for an anti-trust case.



if they say it's for compatibility reasons like they did with physx i doubt there is a case for anti-trust


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## Disruptor4 (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> They are shutting out competitors and, in the discreet GPU market and physics acceleration market, they are the majority.  Both are ripe for an anti-trust case.


Doesn't DX 11 kinda change that though?

Oh, and it has to be said. It's not *invidia*, it's *nvidia*.


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

This sort of thing was bound to happen. Looking forward to seeing some actual results, only seen sneak previews of the hardware working at the moment.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Disruptor4 said:


> Doesn't DX 11 kinda change that though?
> 
> Oh, and it has to be said. It's not *invidia*, it's *nvidia*.


the eye in the nvidia logo is an "I" invidia means envy in latin. I think you're right that is probably is nvidia, but I prefer it the other way.


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

He is right, the company is called nVIDIA.


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## W1zzard (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> the eye in the nvidia logo is an "I" invidia means envy in latin. I think you're right that is probably is nvidia, but I prefer it the other way.



too bad that nvidia comes from videre = see


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

W1zzard said:


> too bad that nvidia comes from videre = see


really? How do you get from videre to nvidia?


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## Airbrushkid (Nov 6, 2009)

I wouldn't be talking anti-trust case when Intels got sued for it and now New York is sueing them.



FordGT90Concept said:


> They are shutting out competitors and, in the discreet GPU market and physics acceleration market, they are the majority.  Both are ripe for an anti-trust case.



Just think if every state sued Intel thats 52 states. How would Intel hold up do you think.


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

Remember folks, edit is your friend.


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## mechtech (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia = FTL!!!

Well until we see what ATI's stance on this is with there crossfire........but I thought crossfire works on intel and ati/amd chips, and not nvidias chipsets.

If Nvidia built a car it would probably only run on nfuel and you couldnt fill it up at any other gas station in the world.


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## btarunr (Nov 6, 2009)

mechtech said:


> Nvidia = FTL!!!
> 
> Well until we see what ATI's stance on this is with there crossfire.



AMD has nothing to lose with this. Crossfire on Intel chipsets is royalty-free.


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## Disparia (Nov 6, 2009)

Adapt or become invalidated!


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## Yellow&Nerdy? (Nov 6, 2009)

First PhysX and now this? The whole point of the Lucid chip is to blend Nvidia and ATI cards. No one would Xfire a 5770 and a 5870, assuming that Nvidia has blocked the Lucid chip from using Geforce cards, because the 5770 is going to drag the total performance down instead of increasing it.

Nvidia always has to "spoil the fun".


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> They are shutting out competitors and, in the discreet GPU market and physics acceleration market, they are the majority.  Both are ripe for an anti-trust case.



You saying that is just hilarious. 

Anyway, I have a few questions:

- Has this been confirmed? From what I can read in OC3D all this claims come directly from Lucid's official site.



> Taken from Lucid’s official site,...



- Do we know if Hydra really works as well as they say it works? What they showna year ago or so was not very promising IMO. If SLI is significantly faster, I can understand Nvidia disallowing this for their cards. Yes Hydra allows Nvidia + Ati, but if it comes at the cost of not working as well as SLI/Crossfire when both cards are the same, Nvdia is in their right to not allow it on their cards, specially if <read next 2 questions>

- Has Lucid worked with Nvidia/AMD in order to improve compatibility or make optimizations? Have they shared key technology info, so that optimizations can be made from both sides? IMO no, they don't. They probably don't want to share it with them, because that could let them learn the technology and implement it by themselves.

- From what I understand Hydra takes DirectX calls and converts them into smaller instructions that the GPUs can understand. As I see it that pretty much bypasses most of the vendor or GPU specific driver work. Where do driver level optimizations go? At least 25% of todays performance comes from GPU and game specific driver level optimizatios. Is Hydra really able to take advantage of those optimizations, when it purposedly breaks original DX calls and breaks them up into smaller pieces? Or are they going to make their own optimizations (do they have the manpower to do so)?


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## phanbuey (Nov 6, 2009)

ehh... this was always gonna happen that I doubt anyone was caught by surprise.  If HYDRA was going to work, it would always have been _despite_ nvidia - i think that was the original business plan.

Next, Lucid will find a workaround and nvidia will throw a tantrum and file a lawsuit.


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## Tartaros (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia is always screwing up good ideas wich could be good for all the community. Greedy bastards...


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## mechtech (Nov 6, 2009)

btarunr said:


> AMD has nothing to lose with this. Crossfire on Intel chipsets is royalty-free.



Yes, but I mean you cant crossfire 2 ATI cards in a Nvidia chip mobo, can you??


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## cauby (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia dickmove activate!
First,those stupid cartoons about Intel and now this...
Nvidia is working really hard to make people forget that they still don't have any DX11 GPU coming this month (or the next,if those Fud rumours are true).


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 6, 2009)

Airbrushkid said:


> Just think if every state sued Intel thats *52 states*. How would Intel hold up do you think.



Wut?


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## FordGT90Concept (Nov 6, 2009)

InnocentCriminal said:


> He is right, the company is called nVIDIA.


NVIDIA is NVIDIA in all their legal documents.  I haven't seen NVIDIA say what it actually stands for or what their inspiration was for the name (if there was any).




Benetanegia said:


> - From what I understand Hydra takes DirectX calls and converts them into smaller instructions that the GPUs can understand. As I see it that pretty much bypasses most of the vendor or GPU specific driver work. Where do driver level optimizations go? At least 25% of todays performance comes from GPU and game specific driver level optimizatios. Is Hydra really able to take advantage of those optimizations, when it purposedly breaks original DX calls and breaks them up into smaller pieces? Or are they going to make their own optimizations (do they have the manpower to do so)?


Hydra sits on the HAL--above drivers.  What NVIDIA is going to do is search for the Hydra HAL and, if found, basically brick the NVIDIA GPUs just for the sake of not letting anyone use NVIDIA cards on a Hydra platform.

As far as normal GPU operation is concerned, Hydra never existed.  Hydra is transparent being on the HAL.


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## btarunr (Nov 6, 2009)

mechtech said:


> Yes, but I mean you cant crossfire 2 ATI cards in a Nvidia chip mobo, can you??



Nobody is going to make nForce 790i SLI motherboards all over again, just with Hydra in place. I am fairly sure about that. nForce 700i, 700a are circa 2007. nForce 980a is a very small market. Only two motherboards so far. Nobody will bother giving it Hydra.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> You saying that is just hilarious.
> 
> - Do we know if Hydra really works as well as they say it works? What they showna year ago or so was not very promising IMO. If SLI is significantly faster, I can understand Nvidia disallowing this for their cards. Yes Hydra allows Nvidia + Ati, but if it comes at the cost of not working as well as SLI/Crossfire when both cards are the same, Nvdia is in their right to not allow it on their cards, specially if <read next 2 questions>
> 
> ...



-part one doesn't matter, if the consumer is willing to sacrifice performance (and I doubt that's the issue for invidia) for a product that serves a variety of functions, it's his choice. Same for part 2.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 6, 2009)

Two propriatary technologies replaced with one...I don't really care...let them fight it out.

And picking the Hydra chip might save the motherboard manufacturers $3 or $5 per board on SLi licencing, but how much does the Hydra chip cost?  I'm betting more than $5.

I wish the two companies would just quite their petty crap, and open both Crossfire and SLi for all platforms, without licencing.  If your motherboard can support Two video card, you can run either, that is how it should be.  This crap with nVidia locking it to only their chipsets, and AMD locking it to only their chipsets(and Intel's on the Intel side) is idiotic.

The Hydra technology is cool because you can mix difference graphics cards, but I'm betting the overhead of doing this will be horrible, and the performance gains won't be anything near true Crossfire and SLi.



FordGT90Concept said:


> I hope someone has the guts (and resources) to sue NVIDIA for their practices in regards to SLI and PhysX.  Their selfish behavior has to stop, now.



PhysX I understand where you are coming from, even though I also understand where nVidia is coming from in that it was ATi's fault for not allowing PhysX to run natively on it's hardware.  But SLi?  You're kidding right?


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue



Perhaps Indeed, there is a lot of perhaps surrounding this debate 

Let me guess, this furthers peoples opinion that Nvidia are evil, or employ underhanded tactics? it's business, and for the most part, they do it well, despite a series of blunders over the past 12-18 months.


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## Black Hades (Nov 6, 2009)

btarunr said:


> [...] Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue, NVIDIA is working on its drivers to ensure that its GeForce GPUs don’t work on platforms that use Hydra. *Perhaps this also ensures "quality control, and compatibility"*, since if the customer isn't satisfied with the quality and performance of Hydra, NVIDIA for one, could end up in the bad books. This could then also kick up warranty issues, and product returns.[...]



If this was only about quality control they'd would just set a Disclaimer and Warning notifying the user that: Any problem encountered while using this Hydra Lucid is in no way responsibility of Nvidia, and not covered by warranty or technical service from their part. This would be the wise and sensible approach. What do they do instead? block it altogether.

No, this is about their revenue almost entirely. This is my opinion.

I rest my case.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Black Hades said:


> If this was only about quality control they'd would just set a Disclaimer and Warning notifying the user that: Any problem encountered while using this Hydra Lucid is in no way responsibility of Nvidia, and not covered by warranty or technical service from their part. This would be the wise and sensible approach. What do they do instead? block it altogether.
> 
> No, this is about their revenue almost entirely. This is my opinion.
> 
> I rest my case.


agreed


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Hydra sits on the HAL--above drivers.  What NVIDIA is going to do is search for the Hydra HAL and, if found, basically brick the NVIDIA GPUs just for the sake of not letting anyone use NVIDIA cards on a Hydra platform.



I know what they are doing. Even if (should I say "because", in fact) they work above driver level, they break up the normal execution of the game into smaller pieces that are then split across all the GPUs available (the fact that any GPU combination works is based on this fact). That breaks any optimizations that are made in driver level for the complex instructions and specially those that are specific for the games.



> As far as normal GPU operation is concerned, Hydra never existed.  Hydra is transparent being on the HAL.



As I said it's transparent as far as execution goes, but it changes completely the work that the GPUs are doing.



theubersmurf said:


> -part one doesn't matter, if the consumer is willing to sacrifice performance (and I doubt that's the issue for invidia) for a product that serves a variety of functions, it's his choice. Same for part 2.



It might not be a concern for an informed user, but Nvidia might be concerned about the uninformed user who would only be able to see that two Nvidia cards are not performing as they should. Uninformed people is 90% of users so it is a big concern for them, in fact.

Extension to that argument: If performance is worse than SLI/Crossfire overall, what's the point of putting a HD5870 and GTX285 together using Hydra (assuming you had a GTX285) when it will perform the same as GTX285 SLI on a normal X58 board? Why not just buy another GTX285 or sell your GTX285 and get two HD5850 cards and enjoy a real improvement?


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## Black Hades (Nov 6, 2009)

Yes I agree this is business, cutthroat environment. They have to fight to survive. But it's an old saying that it's not the strongest of a kind to survive, nor the smartest. It's the one more capable to adapt the current situation.

Their products are excellent, that's good but their business scheme is hostile and it'll draw unwanted attention given time. They should refocus on what they do best and that's video cards not c*ckblocking everyone and losing some customers in the process.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

And yes, this is exactly the same as AMD refusing to let PhysX run on their hardware. Nvidia was probably not willing to share key code information with them so that optimizations could be made in both sides, so AMD refused to support it.

Lucid is not willing to share their key technology so...

Exactly the same. Plus Nvidia is not blocking Hydra technology, they are just not allowing it to run with their hardware. I'm going to use the mantra of AMD and say that until Lucid makes Hydra an open standard, I'm not concerned wether Nvidia blocks or doesn't block them. I have never liked multi-GPU anyway.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> It might not be a concern for an informed user, but Nvidia might be concerned about the uninformed user who would only be able to see that two Nvidia cards are not performing as they should. Uninformed people is 90% of users so it is a big concern for them, in fact.
> 
> Extension to that argument: If performance is worse than SLI/Crossfire overall, what's the point of putting a HD5870 and GTX285 together using Hydra (assuming you had a GTX285) when it will perform the same as GTX285 SLI on a normal X58 board? Why not just buy another GTX285 or sell your GTX285 and get two HD5850 cards and enjoy a real improvement?


I'm not sure what the second point is here, but when I read the first part, it seems like an attempt to rationalize their choices. If driver optimization is a problem, curtailing compatibility, prior to any effort to work around that problem, is a poor choice. The effort put into blocking compatibility could be spent on a workaround or real solution to the problem.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> And yes, this is exactly the same as AMD refusing to let PhysX run on their hardware. Nvidia was probably not willing to share key code information with them so that optimizations could be made in both sides, so AMD refused to support it.
> 
> Lucid is not willing to share their key technology so...
> 
> Exactly the same. Plus Nvidia is not blocking Hydra technology, they are just not allowing it to run with their hardware. I'm going to use the mantra of AMD and say that until Lucid makes Hydra an open standard, I'm not concerned wether Nvidia blocks or doesn't block them. I have never liked multi-GPU anyway.


No it isn't, licensing from their competitors is not the same as blocking a non-party specific piece of hardware. Lucid does own their chip, but neither AMD nor invidia are forced to license directly from one another.


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## WarEagleAU (Nov 6, 2009)

Didn't read all responses, but Nvidia needs to get over it. Of course I understand them wanting to protect their profit, especially if their Chipsets are suffering, but they are selling a bunch of GPUs. Really Nvidia...


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Nov 6, 2009)

Anyone suprised?


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

I feel it is the same, AMD said NO, Nvidia say NO, companies say no when they don't want to. We need to get over it.

and can we please refer to Nvidia by their real name? I mean come on.

Or have we descended into name calling now?


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## Black Hades (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> [...]Plus Nvidia is not blocking Hydra technology, they are just not allowing it to run with their hardware.



My english may fail me but. "Blocking" and "not allowing" is kind of the same in this context since there are currently 2 major players. Lucid Hydra with Nvidia cards barred... may as well be Crossfire

If X is SLI and Y is Crossfire and lucid hydra is XY then X+Y-X=Y so.. 



Benetanegia said:


> [...]I'm going to use the mantra of AMD and say that until Lucid makes Hydra an open standard, I'm not concerned wether Nvidia blocks or doesn't block them. I have never liked multi-GPU anyway.



Yes it's an great view point on the situation. Now wouldn't it be hilarious if AMD did the same thing and bar their hardware on the Lucid Hydra?


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

wolf said:


> I feel it is the same, AMD said NO, Nvidia say NO, companies say no when they don't want to. We need to get over it.
> 
> and can we please refer to Nvidia by their real name? I mean come on.
> 
> Or have we descended into name calling now?


are you referring to my use of invidia in place of nvidia? How would that be name calling? I'm curious.


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

Its not their name? hello!



theubersmurf said:


> I prefer it the other way.



that's cool but its not their name.


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## pantherx12 (Nov 6, 2009)

And Joe isn't my name and yet people call me it instead of Joseph.

I'd hardly call that name calling.

Name calling implies malicious/hurtful intentions.


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

I'll drop it don't worry, call them what you like, it's not worth an argument.

In any case, this move seems typical of their attitude, and I say good on em.

my 2 cents.


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## btarunr (Nov 6, 2009)

Black Hades said:


> If this was only about quality control they'd would just set a Disclaimer and Warning notifying the user that: Any problem encountered while using this Hydra Lucid is in no way responsibility of Nvidia, and not covered by warranty or technical service from their part. This would be the wise and sensible approach. What do they do instead? block it altogether.
> 
> No, this is about their revenue almost entirely. This is my opinion.
> 
> I rest my case.



Which is why I used quotes. The Quality Control BS is what we've been fed, spoonful shovelful, with the recent PhysX cards on systems with ATI incident. It's a great coverup for the uninitiated.


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Nov 6, 2009)

shovefuls of manure i might add


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

wolf said:


> Its not their name? hello!
> 
> 
> 
> that's cool but its not their name.


I'm not sure where the name comes from if not invidia, I'm not going to talk about this with you if you're so sure it's derrogatory. If you came to that conclusion based on my ill will regarding this issue, you're entirely mistaken.









If you look at the logo, the eye is the I in invidia. That's solely where it comes from.


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

It's not an "i" it's an eye, relating to vision et al. You've got good grounds to think it's inspired by invidia and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was an influence, however - nVIDIA are called nVIDIA end of.


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> the eye in the nvidia logo is an "I" invidia means envy in latin.



Thats the only reason I saw ill will, I dont quite see what they would be envious of, I read into that - jealousy.

anyway I'm over it and yeah its settled.


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## pantherx12 (Nov 6, 2009)

I more thought of being a compliment if anything, people are envious of them.

Not the other way round.

( Not that I am, I prefer ATI due to lower cost)


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

pantherx12 said:


> I more thought of being a compliment if anything, people are envious of them.
> 
> Not the other way round.
> 
> ( Not that I am, I prefer ATI due to lower cost)


This is what I suspect they meant.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> No it isn't, licensing from their competitors is not the same as blocking a non-party specific piece of hardware. Lucid does own their chip, but neither AMD nor invidia are forced to license directly from one another.



Eh??? Hello??? AMD blocked a third party programmer from making PhysX possible in AMD cards. Hydra is not a standalone piece of hardware that can work on its own, it depends on GPUs to be of any use, so yes, they have to colaborate as much as AMD/Nvidia feels they have to. If not anyone of them can directly block them from using/modifying their hardware. 

AND all this is if Nvidia is really bloking anything at all, because all I have seen about the issue so far comes from Lucid themselves. It could be just someone in Lucid being pissed off and /or having hallucinations because the only MB using their piece of hardware has been delayed.


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## lemonadesoda (Nov 6, 2009)

What a HUGE STRATEGIC FAUX-PAS by nVidia.  At a time when they are the underdogs, they could have got into bed with Lucid Hydra and done something interesting.  Given that AMD/ATI are doing so well, to be able to sell an nV card into an existing AMD setup would have been a real seller.  If Lucid Hydra is so "clever", they could have also produced CHEAP monitor-output-less CUDA cards that work great with Lucid Hydra to give SLI performance. Making SLI much cheaper than crossfire.

What a missed opportunity.

I dont have a classical education, or the "vidia" would be easy to explain with all the Latin grammar forms: 

"Veni, vidi, vici" (I hope you ALL know what that means) comes from the three Latin verbs "venire", "videre", and "vincere". If you are good with grammar, you can start conjugaing here: http://www.fact-archive.com/dictionary/Videre


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Eh??? Hello??? AMD blocked a third party programmer from making PhysX possible in AMD cards. Hydra is not a standalone piece of hardware that can work on its own, it depends on GPUs to be of any use, so yes, they have to colaborate as much as AMD/Nvidia feels they have to. If not anyone of them can directly block them from using/modifying their hardware.
> 
> AND all this is if Nvidia is really bloking anything at all, because all I have seen about the issue so far comes from Lucid themselves. It could be just someone in Lucid being pissed off and /or having hallucinations because the only MB using their piece of hardware has been delayed.


I don't think AMD is saintly, if that's what you're saying. A third party programmer? I'm not sure they'd want a third party implementing that, even if it's good for the consumer, it steps on proprietary toes to allow it, and could cause problems for them, and if they embrace it, they'll have to pay licensing fees for it...And likely, if they wanted an implementation of it, they'd want their own, in house implementation.


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## AphexDreamer (Nov 6, 2009)

Infinity Ward = nVidia = Satan


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

Shouldn't that be IW + nVIDIA = fail?

Satan kicks ass!


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## AphexDreamer (Nov 6, 2009)

InnocentCriminal said:


> Shouldn't that be IW + nVIDIA = fail?
> 
> Satan kicks ass!



Eh, that works too. Its all a personal preference really.

I was thinking about this song and how they both are chanting this lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn4FOKY6ebE


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

Please tell me were not back to the age old want of Nvidia to fail and die, let us all remember how fail the gfx card market would be as a monopoly.

Infinity ward have taken a step towards dumbery tho imo, anyway I'm getting waaaaay off topic


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## LittleLizard (Nov 6, 2009)

what u can expect from a company that their main color is Green 

seriously talking, this is anti-competitive play. it should be illegal. :shadedshu nvidia


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

LittleLizard said:


> seriously talking, this is anti-competitive play. it should be illegal. :shadedshu nvidia


that's a good point.


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## Mussels (Nov 6, 2009)

when our lawyers combine, we form: marketing failure!


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## InnocentCriminal (Nov 6, 2009)

wolf said:


> Please tell me were not back to the age old want of Nvidia to fail and die, let us all remember how fail the gfx card market would be as a monopoly.
> 
> Infinity ward have taken a step towards dumbery tho imo, anyway I'm getting waaaaay off topic



We are getting way off topic. Back to it.


----------



## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> I don't think AMD is saintly, if that's what you're saying. A third party programmer? *I'm not sure they'd want a third party implementing that, even if it's good for the consumer, it steps on proprietary toes to allow it, and could cause problems for them*, and if they embrace it, they'll have to pay licensing fees for it...And likely, if they wanted an implementation of it, they'd want their own, in house implementation.



No, I'm not calling for AMD's santity, I'm just showing a predecent. Read what you just said, because you just explained why Nvidia wouldn't want their cards to be used under Hydra. Apparently you are all forgetting that it's the GPU what does all the work, Hydra is just a mod, an interface between the system and the GPU that modifies how the GPU works. As for Nvidia, Hydra was going to use their hardware, so it's their call not to allow the use of their product on manners they don't have any control over. The problems that could arise with new GPUs, before Hydra made them work well are very real and I doubt Lucid would be able to fix such problems easily and fast.

I'm not saying I agree with that decission (if it has happened at all), because I don't agree actually, but Nvidia has many reasons to not allow something like Hydra in the way that Lucid is probably doing it and profit is only one of them.

PD: AMD didn't have to pay licensing fees for PhysX it's absolutely free. In the future, maybe, Nvidia could decide to charge, but so can Lucid if it becomes widely used.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> No, I'm not calling for AMD's santity, I'm just showing a predecent. Read what you just said, because you just explained why Nvidia wouldn't want their cards to be used under Hydra. Apparently you are all forgetting that it's the GPU what does all the work, Hydra is just a mod, an interface between the system and the GPU that modifies how the GPU works. As for Nvidia, Hydra was going to use their hardware, so it's their call not to allow the use of their product on manners they don't have any control over. The problems that could arise with new GPUs, before Hydra made them work well are very real and I doubt Lucid would be able to fix such problems easily and fast.
> 
> I'm not saying I agree with that decission (if it has happened at all), because I don't agree actually, but Nvidia has many reasons to not allow something like Hydra in the way that Lucid is probably doing it and profit is only one of them.
> 
> PD: AMD didn't have to pay licensing fees for PhysX it's absolutely free. In the future, maybe, Nvidia could decide to charge, but so can Lucid if it becomes widely used.



multiple gpu systems are not a proprietary item, SLI and Crossfire are. Both are able to implement multi-gpu systems, because the idea of multiple gpus isn't patentable. Besides which, it's a hardware implementation, not a software implementation like the one I discussed. using code to implement physx on an ATI card is completely different. Lucids chip doesn't inhibit any functionality of invidia's cards. At least at this point it doesn't, and prior to any documentation from a third party saying otherwise the idea that they mess with the functionality, I'm going to presume it doesn't. And doesn't step on proprietary toes either, because they can't own the idea of multiple gpu systems.

If someone can come up with a more general purpose method of implementing it, that's all fine and good. And it's not their call, it's the consumers call, if they choose to buy it, it's their right to do so. it doesn't change the way the gpu works, it changes the calls a given gpu gets calls from the cpu. 

Where do you get the idea that AMD wouldn't have to pay licensing fees for the use of physx? I recall invidia saying they would allow it to be implemented on AMD cards, but the idea that physx being available free of charge sounds ludicrous.

Arrgh.


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## Zubasa (Nov 6, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> PhysX I understand where you are coming from, even though I also understand where nVidia is coming from in that it was ATi's fault for not allowing PhysX to run natively on it's hardware.  But SLi?  You're kidding right?


For some wird reason you believe it is ATi's fault. :shadedshu
nVidia is the one that shuts down GPU Physx when an ATi GPU is used in the same system.
I bet its ATi that commands nV to change their drivers right? 
What this really shows that is nVidia have always wanted to keep Physx to themselves.
We might never know why ATi decline to allow Physx on their hardware, but nV most liekly demands a royality and we don't know if its reasonable at all.


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## Cheeseball (Nov 6, 2009)

Well, ATi didn't accept nVIDIA's request (for free too) to allow PhysX to be implemented in the Radeon series.


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## Zubasa (Nov 6, 2009)

Cheeseball said:


> Well, ATi didn't accept nVIDIA's request (for free too) to allow PhysX to be implemented in the Radeon series.


Are you sure that nvidia offered it for free without any conditions?
I will like to see an offical document of that kind.


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

As I remember it Nvidia did make that offer and got a big NO from ATi/AMD at the time, it's now only many months later than Nvidia have made the decision to shut down physx when ATi cards are doing the rendering.

the whole thing is one biiiiiiiig prick waving dick fight over technologies they either don't want to share, or are each too stubborn to accept they were beaten to. (at least I think Nvidia were the first to do on GPU physics?)


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia offered PhysX for free to AMD. The reason for that is simple, they needed it to be widely used. AMD refused for a simple reason, at the time they were nowhere near close to be competitive on that front, they still aren't in reality, but they are closer at least in the general perception.



Zubasa said:


> *Are you sure* that nvidia offered it for free without any conditions?
> I will like to see an offical document of that kind.



YES.



theubersmurf said:


> Lucids chip doesn't inhibit any functionality of invidia's cards. At least at this point it doesn't, and prior to any documentation from a third party saying otherwise the idea that they mess with the functionality, I'm going to presume it doesn't.



It does inhibit some "functionality", by running in the GPU different code than the one that the game would, than the one that cards are optimized to run. Nvidia and Ati have been using game specific optimizations for ages, Hydra bypasses those optimizations because it changes the DX calls being sent to the GPU, it splits them into smaller more multi-GPU freindly calls and them mixes the results up to form the complete image. At least that's what they have described their chip as doing.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> It does inhibit some "functionality", by running in the GPU different code than the one that the game would, than the one that cards are optimized to run. Nvidia and Ati have been using game specific optimizations for ages, Hydra bypasses those optimizations because it changes the DX calls being sent to the GPU, it splits them into smaller more multi-GPU freindly calls and them mixes the results up to form the complete image. At least that's what they have described their chip as doing.



We'll see...when and if there are ever third party benches for these items, and the nda's truly get lifted.


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## Selene (Nov 6, 2009)

I understand the whole PhysX deal, they paid money for that company, they dont have to share that for free.
I know I would have done the same, I do belive they offered to help ATI with it, but they said no, so they got what they deserve IMO.

Now as for Hydra sounds cool, I hope it works, maybe Lucid needs to have a talk with NV and ATI/AMD and say hey we can play together and all make some money on this deal.

Most times stuff like Hydra will end up getting bought out by NV/AMD/Intel, thats what alot of them want any way.
I can see NV buying this simple to put a stop to it, if the whole driver deal goes south.
I think the real winner would be for Intel to buy it, that way you can run any card on their board.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

As much as I hate Nvidia for doing this I don't blame them. They invested a lot of money into their own developments. Why allow the competition benefit from your hard work? Also lets not start screaming "anti-trust" just because we don't agree with something. This is nowhere near anti-trust yet. Nvidia holds the majority of the market but no where near enough to be a monopoly.

Speaking of which whatever happen to the ATI/Nvidia "price fixing" thing a few years ago?


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Nevermind. I found it.......



> Nvidia / ATI Price Fixing Case Gets $1.7M Settlement
> 
> In light of the class action lawsuit that accused hardware makers Nvidia and ATI of fixing prices to keep video card prices artificially high, Nvidia proposed a $1.7M settlement.
> The settlement, which is pending court approval and would resolve all claims against Nvidia, would see that $1.7 million sum split amongst those that bought hardware directly from ATI or Nvidia websites between December 4, 2002 and November 7, 2007.
> ...


Source


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## wolf (Nov 6, 2009)

Selene said:


> I understand the whole PhysX deal, they paid money for that company, they dont have to share that for free.



I almost forgot that, but all around the net people think it deserves a :shadedshu

Given they did pay for that technology, and as I remember it, threw Ageia a bone at the same time (as they were slowly going under) I think it was an olive branch of peace from Nvidia to offer it for free.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Eh??? Hello??? AMD blocked a third party programmer from making PhysX possible in AMD cards. Hydra is not a standalone piece of hardware that can work on its own, it depends on GPUs to be of any use, so yes, they have to colaborate as much as AMD/Nvidia feels they have to. If not anyone of them can directly block them from using/modifying their hardware.
> 
> AND all this is if Nvidia is really bloking anything at all, because all I have seen about the issue so far comes from Lucid themselves. It could be just someone in Lucid being pissed off and /or having hallucinations because the only MB using their piece of hardware has been delayed.


No I believe it was Nvidia that disables Physx when a ATI card is recognized.


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## Cheeseball (Nov 6, 2009)

*@TheMailMan78*

That situation just happened in recent times. Months before, NVIDIA was offering PhysX implementation to AMD/ATI cards, but they just didn't accept it. (Most likely because they wanted to work on their own Stream implementation, but as it is, it never took off.)


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> As much as I hate Nvidia for doing this I don't blame them. They invested a lot of money into their own developments. Why allow the competition benefit from your hard work? Also lets not start screaming "anti-trust" just because we don't agree with something. This is nowhere near anti-trust yet. Nvidia holds the majority of the market but no where near enough to be a monopoly.
> 
> Speaking of which whatever happen to the ATI/Nvidia "price fixing" thing a few years ago?


I got about $130.00 from the settlement. Not what I paid for the stuff, but it was a nice rebate.


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## human_error (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Nvidia offered PhysX for free to AMD. The reason for that is simple, they needed it to be widely used. AMD refused for a simple reason, at the time they were nowhere near close to be competitive on that front, they still aren't in reality, but they are closer at least in the general perception.



I don't believe nvidia did offer it free to ATi. The guy who hacked out the ability to run physx on ati cards was snapped up by nvidia almost immediately to stop him making any more drivers (nvidia couldn't order a cease and dissist order like creative does to driver modders as he was modding ATi drivers). Even if Nvidia said publicly they offered physx free to ATi (which i have never seen official evidence of) behind closed doors they would have demanded a heavy premium from ATi - every card sale nvidia could have made only due to physx hype would have been lost and so they would have lost revenue, so unless we see official documentation from nvidia you can't say it was offered free (to be fair it would be stupid to offer it free, but i can see nvidia getting unreasonable in liscencing demands from their competition). I'm not saying ATi are saints, but i am saying that nvidia's M.O. at the moment is dick move after dick move (removing dx10.1 from Assasins creed, blocking AA in batman:AA, disabling physx if an ati card is present, bricking their cards if luicid is present).

Back OT though this is a dick move from nvidia - they see their proprietary standard (and chipsets) threatened by a new product and so c*ckblock it - the hydra chip only allocates different directx calls to different chips - there is nothing wrong in that as all the cards handle is directx calls, the hydra chip just reduces the number of calls an individual card has to make, so there is no compatability issue there (it's the same thing as reducing draw distance or disabling the showing of certain effects in-game, less directx calls - the only issue would be with AA across boundaries but i'm sure luicid would be able to workaround that issue. Luicid would have no effect on how the nvidia cards would work - the nvidia drivers still decode the directx calls and render an image - this would be no different if luicid was there or not - the problem comes as nvidia's chipsets and SLi liscencing would be significantly reduced if luicid became popular, as well as nvidia's ability to block dual ati cards from working on nvidia chipsets.

Here's to hoping luicid can release soon, i'd really like to see if it is more efficient than SLi/crossfire


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Cheeseball said:


> *@TheMailMan78*
> 
> That situation just happened in recent times. Months before, NVIDIA was offering PhysX implementation to AMD/ATI cards, but they just didn't accept it. (Most likely because they wanted to work on their own Stream implementation, but as it is, it never took off.)



Well my point is nothing is for free. That olive branch had a cost. Licensing or something. You don't buy out a company and give the technology to your competitor. Also the fact Nvidia disables support of Physx when a non-Nvidia GPU is present kinda brings that home.


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

nVidia is like trying to have its own little monopoly. I dislike it very much, thus why I have not/Will not buy anything from nvidia ( Epic im wearing a Nvidia shirt only thing I own )


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Munki said:


> nVidia is like trying to have its own little monopoly. I dislike it very much, thus why I have not/Will not buy anything from nvidia ( Epic im wearing a Nvidia shirt only thing I own )



You have an Nvidia T-Shirt? Dork.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Ill trade you my ATI shirt for your nVidia shirt 

I dont like their business practices BUT i love their products. I really dont care what they do on the side just as long as they HURRY THE FUCK UP WITH A GOD DAMNED DX11 GPU!!!!!!!!


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

PP Mguire said:


> Ill trade you my ATI shirt for your nVidia shirt
> 
> I dont like their business practices BUT i love their products. I really dont care what they do on the side just as long as they HURRY THE FUCK UP WITH A GOD DAMNED DX11 GPU!!!!!!!!



Man after my own heart. My next rig will be Intel/Nvidia for sure.


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> You have an Nvidia T-Shirt? Dork.



Zat meh! I am THE dork.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Well my point is nothing is for free. That olive branch had a cost. Licensing or something. You don't buy out a company and give the technology to your competitor. Also the fact Nvidia disables support of Physx when a non-Nvidia GPU is present kinda brings that home.



Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".



human_error said:


> I don't believe nvidia did offer it free to ATi. The guy who hacked out the ability to run physx on ati cards was snapped up by nvidia almost immediately to stop him making any more drivers (nvidia couldn't order a cease and dissist order like creative does to driver modders as he was modding ATi drivers). Even if Nvidia said publicly they offered physx free to ATi (which i have never seen official evidence of) behind closed doors they would have demanded a heavy premium from ATi - every card sale nvidia could have made only due to physx hype would have been lost and so they would have lost revenue, so unless we see official documentation from nvidia you can't say it was offered free (to be fair it would be stupid to offer it free, but i can see nvidia getting unreasonable in liscencing demands from their competition). I'm not saying ATi are saints, but i am saying that nvidia's M.O. at the moment is dick move after dick move (removing dx10.1 from Assasins creed, blocking AA in batman:AA, disabling physx if an ati card is present, bricking their cards if luicid is present).
> 
> Back OT though this is a dick move from nvidia - they see their proprietary standard (and chipsets) threatened by a new product and so c*ckblock it - the hydra chip only allocates different directx calls to different chips - there is nothing wrong in that as all the cards handle is directx calls, the hydra chip just reduces the number of calls an individual card has to make, so there is no compatability issue there (it's the same thing as reducing draw distance or disabling the showing of certain effects in-game, less directx calls - the only issue would be with AA across boundaries but i'm sure luicid would be able to workaround that issue. Luicid would have no effect on how the nvidia cards would work - the nvidia drivers still decode the directx calls and render an image - this would be no different if luicid was there or not - the problem comes as nvidia's chipsets and SLi liscencing would be significantly reduced if luicid became popular, as well as nvidia's ability to block dual ati cards from working on nvidia chipsets.
> 
> Here's to hoping luicid can release soon, i'd really like to see if it is more efficient than SLi/crossfire



You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free. You are basing your opinion in things that are and have always been wrong. They have always been FUD, like:

- Assassin's Creed and DX10.1. You want proofs of that Nvidia offered PhysX for free, but you are willing to believe that BS against what the developer said with no proofs. Nvidia had nothing to do with that, if they didn't want dx10.1 *the game would have never been released with dx10.1!!! it's not as if they couldn't buy an Ati DX10.1 card, test how it performed and take out DX10.1 from the game before they launched.* Proof of that is that the same develper released just a few months later FarCry 2, that not only had DX10.1, but also had implemented into DX10 the same special AA feature that was the only thing that was better in the 10.1 version of AC.

- Batman and AA: discussed many times, Unreal engine has no AA, that AA was specifically programmed for Nvidia, it even says Nvidia AA in the menu. The developer asked AMD to send some engineers to help QA assurance that AA for Ati cards. AMD didn't even want to hear about them from the start because it was a TWIMTBP game.

- Blocking PhysX is because of the same and I explain that above.

- Lucid is because of the same.


----------



## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Man after my own heart. My next rig will be Intel/Nvidia for sure.



Well you saw what i did. i5/Nvidia ftw. Ive never been happier with my PC. (Besides when my dad upgraded my P1 to a Duron 950mhz with DDR back in the day.......but thats besides the point)

I dont see why people get all jumbled up about what this or that company does in the end. As long as YOU the CONSUMER dont get affected then it shouldnt matter. All i care about is products being released in a timely manner and prices dont skyrocket more than they already have. (It goes for any computer company in my books)



Benetanegia said:


> Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This is exactly why i didnt get into the batman flamethread. I dont see why ATI can have 10.1 features where as Nvidia cant have their own AA in a game. A SINGLE GAME. 

I supposed every side will have its closed minded fanbois.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".
> 
> 
> 
> ...



NOTHING is for free my friend. Thats the only proof I need. Why would a company buy something and then GIVE it to their competitor?


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Munki said:


> Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.



Yeah. Its called principle.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free.


Provide evidence of this claim.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Munki said:


> Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.



Every computer company is crooked in its own way. I proved this with AMD/ATI a while back during 5000 launch. So if you base your purchases on that then you should go to custom building your own computer from scratch designing your own parts.


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## iLLz (Nov 6, 2009)

FordGT90Concept said:


> I hope someone has the guts (and resources) to sue NVIDIA for their practices in regards to SLI and PhysX.  Their selfish behavior has to stop, now.
> 
> I wonder what Intel is going to do with Larrabee.  Are they going to embrace Hydra or invent something on their own for multi-GPU technology.  Because of Larrabee, I think it will be Intel that decides this feud between NVIDIA and Lucid if Lucid doesn't act on their own behalf.



Intel invested in LucidLogix to help them get Hydra up and running.  I believe they invested a cool $100 Million a while back.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Intel ftw.


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

PP Mguire said:


> Every computer company is crooked in its own way. I proved this with AMD/ATI a while back during 5000 launch. So if you base your purchases on that then you should go to custom building your own computer from scratch designing your own parts.



This is a constant thing with Nvidia, I could understand it within reason, but this is getting out of hand.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> Provide evidence of this claim.



No hes right. They did offer it but the details were never fully disclosed. Just a lot of PR BS basically.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Munki said:


> This is a constant thing with Nvidia, I could understand it within reason, but this is getting out of hand.



Its a constant thing with any company that has been in this discussion. Light is on Nvidia because they are a major hammer in the industry. Only reason. Same goes for Intel and their own lawsuite.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> NOTHING is for free my friend. Thats the only proof I need. Why would a company buy something and then GIVE it to their competitor?



So that it becomes widely used?


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

PP Mguire said:


> Its a constant thing with any company that has been in this discussion. Light is on Nvidia because they are a major hammer in the industry. Only reason. Same goes for Intel and their own lawsuite.



Okay then. Im going back to my hot pockets.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> No hes right. They did offer it but the details were never fully disclosed. Just a lot of PR BS basically.


Not that it was offered, that it was offered for free.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Munki said:


> Okay then. Im going back to my hot pockets.



I can haz hotpocketzz?


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## Munki (Nov 6, 2009)

PP Mguire said:


> I can haz hotpocketzz?



I don't know, can you?


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> Provide evidence of this claim.



When you provide proofs that DX10.1 was removed because of Nvidia, or that Nvidia specifically asked not to implement AA in Batman, I'll start searching for the proofs that Nvidia did offer it for free. They have said so many times, AMD has not replied, so I guess they agree?


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> So that it becomes widely used?



 REALLY DUDE? REALLY?!


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> When you provide proofs that DX10.1 was removed because of Nvidia, or that Nvidia specifically asked not to implement AA in Batman, I'll start searching for the proofs that Nvidia did offer it for free. They have said so many times, AMD has not replied, so I guess they agree?


You've made the claim voraciously throughout the thread, I'm not the guy in the argument with you over the AA in batman, I think you're responding to someone else. I want to see this documented. If you want it to be considered a point that you've made, you have to substantiate it. I don't give a damn about batman or assassins creed, I'm discussing a completely different point.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> You've made the claim voraciously throughout the thread, I'm not the guy in the argument with you over the AA in batman, I think you're responding to someone else. I want to see this documented. If you want it to be considered a point that you've made, you have to substantiate it. I don't give a damn about batman or assassins creed, I'm discussing a completely different point.



I don't have to give any proof. Nvidia reps have said that like a million times and no AMD rep has steped up saying it was false. All that AMD say regarding that is "We don't support propietary tech". That's all the proof I need. You don't have any proof to say they didn't offer it for free, so taking into account Nvidia's take and AMD's take, I win, it was offered for free. They are offering it for free to developers too, and that is a fact very well known.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

naturally the company with the most to lose will shun hydra technology. if the tables were turned im positive that amd would do the same thing.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> I don't have to give any proof. Nvidia reps have said that like a million times and no AMD rep has steped up saying it was false. All that AMD say regarding that is "We don't support propietary tech". That's all the proof I need. You don't have any proof to say they didn't offer it for free, so taking into account Nvidia's take and AMD's take, I win, it was offered for free. They are offering it for free to developers too, and that is a fact very well known.



If its proprietary that means it wasn't free.



Easy Rhino said:


> naturally the company with the most to lose will shun hydra technology. if the tables were turned im positive that amd would do the same thing.



Of course they would. Again why would you buy something and give it to your worst enemy?!


----------



## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> I don't have to give any proof. Nvidia reps have said that like a million times and no AMD rep has steped up saying it was false. All that AMD say regarding that is "We don't support propietary tech". That's all the proof I need. You don't have any proof to say they didn't offer it for free, so taking into account Nvidia's take and AMD's take, I win, it was offered for free.



So if the invidia reps have said this so many times...where is it documented?

And your counter argument is that I have no proof that they weren't offered to run invidias physx api for free? Do you know what Occam's razer is? So this grand gesture of generosity given by invidia, a corporation, with noticably greedy habits seems likely to you? It's giving away it's IP...for free. I suspect you've never read this anywhere, you just want to make these claims so that invidia will continue to look good. Or maybe if invidia looks bad your head will explode or something. idk.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> If its proprietary that means it wasn't free.



Propietary doesn't mean it's not free. Propietary means it's not an open standard, which BTW doesn't have to be free anyway. But in this case it was free, because they wanted AMD to implement it at all cost. When it comes to physics they are not compating with AMD at ALL. They are competing with Intel and their Havok. They are in a race, because once Intel has Larrabee, there's no doubt that Havok will run much much better on their GPUs, even if they are 10 times worse in graphics. Havok will always be optimized for x86, period.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Actually, if its open then it means its open to the public  Aka Open Source. (IE Linux)


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Propietary doesn't mean it's not free. Propietary means it's not an open standard, which BTW doesn't have to be free anyway. But in this case it was free, because they wanted AMD to implement it at all cost. When it comes to physics they are not compating with AMD at ALL. They are competing with Intel and their Havok. They are in a race, because once Intel has Larrabee, there's no doubt that Havok will run much much better on their GPUs, even if they are 10 times worse in graphics. Havok will always be optimized for x86, period.



ATI is in bed with Intel and Havok. So your saying Nivida offered it for free to ATI to beat Intel?



PP Mguire said:


> Actually, if its open then it means its open to the public  Aka Open Source. (IE Linux)


Shhhhhh hes on a roll!


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

*Waiting for the "AMD shuns Lucid Hydra" article.


-Nvidia needs to do less shunning, and start making new hardware.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> *Waiting for the "AMD shuns Lucid Hydra" article.



Any day now I bet.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard

Open Standard =! Open Source =! Open door 

Just in case


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## 1Kurgan1 (Nov 6, 2009)

Seen this coming the instant Lucid was announced, not a shock, Im surprised they didn't just say it then.


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## PP Mguire (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
> 
> Open Standard =! Open Source =! Open door
> 
> Just in case



Open standard + Open Source + Open Door = public. It says so in the wiki you provided.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> So if the invidia reps have said this so many times...where is it documented?



It was in Shacknews where that has been said, and it's impossible to find that out now. I've tried but nothing, keep in mind it 12 months old info. Anyway:

http://www.geeks3d.com/20080705/upd...deon-cards-nvidia-offers-help-on-the-project/

That is, just a little bit after the rejection, Nvidia was fully supporting that programmer, tell me, they were going to ask him for money? He would have to pay for every Ati card that used that hack or what? 



PP Mguire said:


> Open standard + Open Source + Open Door = public. It says so in the wiki you provided.



Yeah, but it's not the same. An Open Standard doesn't have to be open source. And definately doesn't have to be free. Open Source doesn't have to be free either.

I mean, open standard means you are free to use it and almost always you can do it for free (although not always), but the code or technology is not necesarily open. You can't change it and sometimes some bits of the open standard are semi-propietary. It says in the wiki too.


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## human_error (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> That is, just a little bit after the rejection, Nvidia was fully supporting that programmer, tell me, *they were going to ask him for money? He would have to pay for every Ati card that used that hack or what?*



Umm no - that's why they hired him at nvidia - so he wouldn't continue the project (it was the only way they could stop him). 

You can say "well nvidia reps said they offered it free" until you're blue in the face but they are going to try and make it seem like nvidia is a saint (that's tehir job)- the fact is that nvidia paid for physx, they would never give it away for free since they don't get any money for physx games being sold (they only get money for hardware sales). It is all propoganda at the end of the day - nvidia said they'd never bother with dx10.1 because it wasn't worth doing then they released the gt210/220 cards and now dx10.1 is _required_ for the best gaming experience.

OT i keep seeing the excuse of quality control being thrown around as the reason why nvidia is blocking the hydra chip - this is a load of bull as hydra just sends directx calls to different locations - there is no QC needed on the nvidia end of things as their drivers get directx calls and render the scene - it doesn't matter how many directx calls there are or even if all of the scene is present as it will work the same. Nvidia is just abusing it's dominance in the GPU market to influence manufacturers to delay or prevent the launch of competing products (in this case the hydra chip which competes with nvidia solutions) - this is extremely similar to what intel did to AMD in the Athlon 64 era - they used market dominance to influence manufacturers to not launch products with competing technology.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> http://www.geeks3d.com/20080705/upd...deon-cards-nvidia-offers-help-on-the-project/
> 
> That is, just a little bit after the rejection, Nvidia was fully supporting that programmer, tell me, they were going to ask him for money? He would have to pay for every Ati card that used that hack or what?


I remember this stuff, I don't think it's conclusive of invidia giving away it's IP. I think what's more likely is they wanted it implemented, and for AMD to have to pay for it.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

human_error said:


> Umm no - that's why they hired him at nvidia - so he wouldn't continue the project (it was the only way they could stop him).
> 
> You can say "well nvidia reps said they offered it free" until you're blue in the face but they are going to try and make it seem like nvidia is a saint (that's tehir job)- the fact is that nvidia paid for physx, they would never give it away for free since they don't get any money for physx games being sold (they only get money for hardware sales). It is all propoganda at the end of the day - nvidia said they'd never bother with dx10.1 because it wasn't worth doing then they released the gt210/220 cards and now dx10.1 is _required_ for the best gaming experience.



Yeah of course, I forgot that Nvidia is the evil company. And it's because of the same things always are mentioned, which have always been false, AC DX10.1, PhysX, TWIMTBP...

The fact is that they are jus the target of everybody's hate and that is what I hate and why I'm always on their side. I hate all that BS, lies and FUD that is always based in previous FUD and BS. This thing about Lucid must be because of wrongdoing and not a valid reason because of what they did with PhysX and Ati, what they did with Ati+PhysX was wrongdoing because what they did with Batman AA, what they did with Batman was wrongdoing because of what they did with AC DX10.1 and so on. Reality is that they are not guilty of anything of that, but the ball just gets rolling, it would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. But hey, it's the same mechanism that establishes all the myths and I love MythBusters so I should be happy...  :shadedshu No, it's pathetic. As pathetic as UFO hunting.


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Stay on topic.  I really don't want to come into this thread and see rehash after rehash of the same crap (physx, batman, etc.) again and again. 

Personally, why should we care what Nvidia has to say about another product? Do we listen to Del Monte rip Chiquita over their substandard bannanas? Are Charmin's claims about having softer toilet paper over their competetors really true?!


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

This is what MSI has to say regarding the delay on the Hydra MB and the MB with NF200 being released before the Hydra one:



> “The MSI P55 Big Bang with NVIDIA NF200 was already planned in December 2008, almost one year ago. MSI showcased this board on Cebit 2009 which was reported by many media like http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php?id=24935&catid=2 and there are also photos which show very clearly the NF200 chip: http://images.hardware.info/news/cebit-day2-23.jpg. MSI Big Bang Trinergy (NF200) is already announced and will go into mass production by the end of November.
> 
> The MSI Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) hardware is ready. Currently Lucid is optimizing the driver for Windows 7 so that it works stable and in all configurations (Including Mix & Match mode). Because MSI is dedicated to bring high quality and stable product on the market we decided to postpone the Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) pending the MSI internal qualification assurance test. The Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) will be released when it’s driver is finished which is most likely Q1 2010."



From: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/11/04/nvidia-crushes-msis-lucid-based-board/


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## W1zzard (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Are Charmin's claims about having softer toilet paper over their competetors really true?!



toilet paper is a very interesting kind of product ... no matter how good it is in theory, advertising or how cheap, environment friendly it is, if you dont like it you just dont like it and wont ever buy it again.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Nov 6, 2009)

W1zzard said:


> toilet paper is a very interesting kind of product ... no matter how good it is in theory, advertising or how cheap, environment friendly it is, if you dont like it you just dont like it and wont ever buy it again.



You sound like a man with experience here, so I will ask, what is a good alternative if I want to go "cold turkey" on the toilet paper?


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## pantherx12 (Nov 6, 2009)

Quite often advertisements for toilet paper use animals in their adds, the animals used are a hint as to what animal would replace that toilet paper best!


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## 1Kurgan1 (Nov 6, 2009)

pantherx12 said:


> Quite often advertisements for toilet paper use animals in their adds, the animals used are a hint as to what animal would replace that toilet paper best!



So what your saying is using a bear instead of charmin to wipe with is a better choice? You first!


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## dir_d (Nov 6, 2009)

Way off topic lol


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

dir_d said:


> Way off topic lol



Yes, sorry about what I started here. me--><--me Anyways, where are these Hydra boards?


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## dir_d (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Yes, sorry about what I started here. me--><--me Anyways, where are these Hydra boards?



In QA...They will be here 1st quarter and i hope w1z gets to review one. ill hook up my old 8800GTS 640MB


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## pr0n Inspector (Nov 6, 2009)

I like reading threads with little boys screaming "OMFG SO EVIL!!!11!", for no apparent reason.
It's kind of like watching re**rds refusing to eat supermarket chicken because "I WATCHED A HIPPIE DOCUMENTARY LAST NIGHT AND CHICKENS WERE TREATED LIKE SHIT IN FARMS ITS SO HORRIBLE".


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## 1Kurgan1 (Nov 6, 2009)

pr0n Inspector said:


> I like reading threads with little boys screaming "OMFG SO EVIL!!!11!", for no apparent reason.
> It's kind of like watching re**rds refusing to eat supermarket chicken because "I WATCHED A HIPPIE DOCUMENTARY LAST NIGHT AND CHICKENS WERE TREATED LIKE SHIT IN FARMS ITS SO HORRIBLE".



This is coming from the pr0n Inspector.... People are mostly right here, every company is out for a profit, but NV is just being slimy, if their isnt a buck in it for them at every corner, they will cry, slam their hands down, and try and change that with the best of their ability. Why the heck do they need to profit on mobo's supporting them?


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

1Kurgan1 said:


> This is coming from the pr0n Inspector.... People are mostly right here, every company is out for a profit, but NV is just being slimy, if their isnt a buck in it for them at every corner, they will cry, slam their hands down, and try and change that with the best of their ability. Why the heck do they need to profit on mobo's supporting them?



because mobo vendors are willing to pay them for it...


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia would rather have their NF200 chip on motherboards than Hydra. That's why they are complaining. Unfortunately for them, NF200 only works with their cards, uses more power and produces more heat.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Nvidia would rather have their NF200 chip on motherboards than Hydra. That's why they are complaining. Unfortunately for them, NF200 only works with their cards, uses more power and produces more heat.



what i dont get is how people do not understand why nvidia would not be in favor of the hydra chip. it cuts into a major segment of their sales. are they just supposed to role over and lose hundreds of millions? the good thing, if this is executed properly, both amd and nvidia will start producing chipsets that support some sort of hybrid crossfire/sli tech.  they will only do this if the hydra chip truly cuts into their sales and obviously they dont want that to happen until they are prepared for it.


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## pr0n Inspector (Nov 6, 2009)

btarunr said:


> MSI has the industry’s first release-grade motherboard, the Big Bang Fuzion P55 that uses Hydra to power multiple GPUs, while also allowing users to mix and match various PCI-Express GPUs to suit their needs, something new particularly for NVIDIA users. Earlier expected to be announced around this time, MSI’s Big Bang Fuzion, as it is called by its maker, has been indefinitely delayed up to Q1 2010. Apparently to fill the void created by months of hype, *MSI rushed in its cousin, a similar-looking motherboard, that uses the nForce 200 chip, to provide 3-way SLI support, called the Big Bang Trinergy P55*, which will stay on as the company’s top offering for the P55 platform. One can only hope that Hydra doesn’t end up stillborn because of corporate strategy by much larger companies.
> 
> Source: Overclock3D.Net




Rushed? G9P55-DC is old.


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## Arrakis9 (Nov 6, 2009)

nvidia = fail


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> what i dont get is how people do not understand why nvidia would not be in favor of the hydra chip. it cuts into a major segment of their sales. are they just supposed to role over and lose hundreds of millions? the good thing, if this is executed properly, both amd and nvidia will start producing chipsets that support some sort of hybrid crossfire/sli tech.  they will only do this if the hydra chip truly cuts into their sales and obviously they dont want that to happen until they are prepared for it.



I think people understand that. Unfortunately Nvidia is doing this:



> Perhaps fearing a loss of revenue, NVIDIA is working on its drivers to ensure that its GeForce GPUs don’t work on platforms that use Hydra.



Instead of trying to compete with the competition with innovation, Nvidia is taking a step backwards to protect whatever chipset product they have left. I don't think this will fare well for Nvidia. I know if I were a motherboard manufacterer, I'd be raising my giant middle finger to Nvidia right about now. Not to mention the actual end user/enthusiast who would love to use Nvidia cards on a Hydra system.


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## dir_d (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Instead of trying to compete with the competition with innovation, Nvidia is taking a step backwards to protect whatever chipset product they have left. I don't think this will fare well for Nvidia. I know if I were a motherboard manufacterer, I'd be raising my giant middle finger to Nvidia right about now. Not to mention the actual end user/enthusiast who would love to use Nvidia cards on a Hydra system.



It will get cracked eventually just like SLi and Physx...Its sad that they have to put up a fight like this but honestly they cant stop the consumers if they want something unless they do it on the hardware side.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> I think people understand that. Unfortunately Nvidia is doing this:
> 
> 
> 
> Instead of trying to compete with the competition with innovation, Nvidia is taking a step backwards to protect whatever chipset product they have left. I don't think this will fare well for Nvidia. I know if I were a motherboard manufacterer, I'd be raising my giant middle finger to Nvidia right about now. Not to mention the actual end user/enthusiast who would love to use Nvidia cards on a Hydra system.



of course they will do this. hydra is competition.


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## inferKNOX (Nov 6, 2009)

What I really don't get is why some people jump to defend any company if they claim impartiality.
People are unhappy and they deserve a chance to rant about it!
Why is it that someone always jumps up to shut everyone up for... well no reason really other than to be the 'defendants' self proclaimed lawyers. Just to say, "Oh, and by the way, I'm not a fanboy, I use <fill in the competing co.'s product here> too."
What are you trying to hold people down for?
If they did something people hate, they aught to be called on it without anyone back-chatting the complaints other than they themselves or those under their employ. :shadedshu


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> of course they will do this. hydra is competition.



Well, since Nvidia chipsets are fading away I'm hoping motherboard manufacturers just stop using Nvidia chipsets all together. Afterall whats in it for them then? This is Nvidia forcing motherboard manufacturers to buy their product so another product will work with it. Pretty lousy practice if you ask me, and I hope it isn't tolerated much further. As a consumer, I have no idea why another consumer would defend it. I prefer variety over whatever the hell Nvidia is doing.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Well, since Nvidia chipsets are fading away I'm hoping motherboard manufacturers just stop using Nvidia chipsets all together. Afterall whats in it for them then? This is Nvidia forcing motherboard manufacturers to buy their product so another product will work with it. Pretty lousy practice if you ask me.



well if nvidia mobo chipsets are going away then why are people complaining? this is only temporary.


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> well if nvidia mobo chipsets are going away then why are people complaining? this is only temporary.



Because it's prolonging the temporary and offering less choice on hardware configurations to the consumer. Tell me, would you rather have multiple options on what you can put on your motherboard, or be limited and pay a premium for it since motherboard manufacturers pass the cost of Nvidia's chip and licensing to the consumer?


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Because it's prolonging the temporary and offering less choice on hardware configurations to the consumer. Tell me, would you rather have multiple options on what you can put on your motherboard, or be limited?



of course as a consumer i would want multiple options. but i dont run nvidia so i cant tell them what to do. nor do i know what they have going on in the background with business deals they have working with other vendors. so i think we rush to judgement by saying nvidia is acting poorly. what i will do is support the chipset that works the best for me.


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> what i will do is support the chipset that works the best for me.



...and unfortunately through what Nvidia is essentially doing, the best possible chipset that may work for us won't work.


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## Solaris17 (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> ...and unfortunately through what Nvidia is essentially doing, the best possible chipset that may work for us won't work.



it will be cracked dont worry.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> ...and unfortunately through what Nvidia is essentially doing, the best possible chipset that may work for us won't work.



that is normal. a lot of times the best innovations dont actually make it to market because of the business environment.


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## erocker (Nov 6, 2009)

Indeed. On that note, I'm not worrying since I won't be buying anything Nvidia anytime soon due to these and prior business practices. It's a shame too, I really liked my GTX260, but I'll manage.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 6, 2009)

erocker said:


> Indeed. On that note, I'm not worrying since I won't be buying anything Nvidia anytime soon due to these and prior business practices. It's a shame too, I really liked my GTX260, but I'll manage.



good. i hope everyone boycotts because of this. i think it sucks but i hope that nvidia will see the light or they atleas have something similiar to hydra coming down the pike. there is a very good reason why nvidia is slowly phasing out their mobo chipsets, and im guessing it is financial.


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## phanbuey (Nov 6, 2009)

yeah well... if everyone boycotts nvidia, then we won't need hydra in the first place :/

Whoever said that AMD would shun HYDRA as well was dead on.  Intel would probably be next in line because their chipset division would be butthurt over this.  I just hope an antitrust suit forces them to open up the market, unlikely, but it would be the only thing that would work.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

inferKNOX said:


> What I really don't get is why some people jump to defend any company if they claim impartiality.
> People are unhappy and they deserve a chance to rant about it!
> Why is it that someone always jumps up to shut everyone up for... well no reason really other than to be the 'defendants' self proclaimed lawyers. Just to say, "Oh, and by the way, I'm not a fanboy, I use <fill in the competing co.'s product here> too."
> What are you trying to hold people down for?
> If they did something people hate, they aught to be called on it without anyone back-chatting the complaints other than they themselves or those under their employ. :shadedshu



Because I hate people attacking other people for no good reason. If they were blaming Nvidia for the good reasons I wouldn't step up, but it's always for the same crap. I started this thread asking some questions that no one knows. We don't know if it runs well, we don't know if they create any conflict, we know nothing. So without knowing the real reasons for this, it's just assuming that Nvidia did something wrong all the time, "because they did it in the past" and then the same crap as always follows, Assassin's Creed, etc. So being that the precedents they are bringing up have always been false, I have to assume they just think this must be wrongdoing because of hate, without them taking the rest of the options into perspective.

A lot has been discussed about AA in Batman and the same arguments have been used. The same happened with PhysX and it's always people judging before knowing facts. It wouldn't be bad if they only judged, but people tend to blame and insult and that is something that I simply can't stand anywhere. I've always been like that, i.e. when I was 14 a mother was screaming at her kids, in a bad manner and from what I could tell for no good reasons, so I stepped up. She went mute when I started reprehending her and she promised she would never do it again. She was shocked at the fact that a 14 year old "kid" could have told her she was abusing her children and she was unable to see it. Since then I've been always that way, and I don't regret it. It has put me in troubles many times, I don't care.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 6, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> what i dont get is how people do not understand why nvidia would not be in favor of the hydra chip. it cuts into a major segment of their sales. are they just supposed to role over and lose hundreds of millions? the good thing, if this is executed properly, both amd and nvidia will start producing chipsets that support some sort of hybrid crossfire/sli tech.  they will only do this if the hydra chip truly cuts into their sales and obviously they dont want that to happen until they are prepared for it.


It's understandable, but still sort of nasty. Honestly, if intel, invidia, and AMD were all using lucid logix chips on their mobos, the playing field would be flat. invidia fighting against that doesn't strike me as odd, as intel gets all of the attention, and I wouldn't be surprised if AMD disallows them on their enthusiast boards. But I'd be curious the marketshares of mobo sales after such a broad adoption of lucid's chip.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 6, 2009)

Nvidia is being dumb as it is, they will get rolled over by both Intel and AMD if they dont change their business practices


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## phanbuey (Nov 6, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Because I hate people attacking other people for no good reason. If they were blaming Nvidia for the good reasons I wouldn't step up, but it's always for the same crap. I started this thread asking some questions that no one knows. We don't know if it runs well, we don't know if they create any conflict, we know nothing. So without knowing the real reasons for this, it's just assuming that Nvidia did something wrong all the time, "because they did it in the past" and then the same crap as always follows, Assassin's Creed, etc. So being that the precedents they are bringing up have always been false, I have to assume they just think this must be wrongdoing because of hate, without them taking the rest of the options into perspective.
> 
> A lot has been discussed about AA in Batman and the same arguments have been used. The same happened with PhysX and it's always people judging before knowing facts. It wouldn't be bad if they only judged, but people tend to blame and insult and that is something that I simply can't stand anywhere. I've always been like that, i.e. when I was 14 a mother was screaming at her kids, in a bad manner and from what I could tell for no good reasons, so I stepped up. She went mute when I started reprehending her and she promised she would never do it again. She was shocked at the fact that a 14 year old "kid" could have told her she was abusing her children and she was unable to see it. Since then I've been always that way, and I don't regret it. It has put me in troubles many times, I don't care.



You just related nvidia being called out for shady business practices to a mother abusing her kids... 

Yeahhh...  They do have shady business practices.  Facts are great, but the fact is they could have embraced it, instead they squash it to prevent it from competing with their solutions.  They could have gone about this a number of different ways but they chose the most anti-competitive.

I apologize to any children I abused, or puppies that I might have kicked in the making of that post.


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## Tartaros (Nov 6, 2009)

> If they were blaming Nvidia for the good reasons I wouldn't step up, but it's always for the same crap. I started this thread asking some questions that no one knows. We don't know if it runs well, we don't know if they create any conflict, we know nothing



I think the fanboy discussion is not what we are talking about in this thread, we are complaining because of nvidia's decisions about not opening their technology. I know perfectly they are in all their right to do that, but they have screwed up a new way of doing things that could have benefit all of us. In the end, the ones who are screwed with this decision are us, the customers.



> Facts are great, but the fact is they could have embraced it, instead they squash it to prevent it from competing with their solutions. They could have gone about this a number of different ways but they chose the most anti-competitive.



+1


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## Benetanegia (Nov 6, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> You just related nvidia being called out for shady business practices to a mother abusing her kids...
> 
> Yeahhh...  They do have shady business practices.  Facts are great, but the fact is they could have embraced it, instead they squash it to prevent it from competing with their solutions.  They could have gone about this a number of different ways but they chose the most anti-competitive.
> 
> I apologize to any children I abused, or puppies that I might have kicked in the making of that post.



No, I am not comparing them, I'm just stating how I am, so that it can be understood how I act. I do think Nvidia is doing this to protect their bussiness, but at the same time there are other reasons too that should be taken into consideration. It's really important for me to see everything from all the angles and I hate people that blindly follow wrong stablished ideas and don't make the effort to see all angls. You don't know if that is the only reason, just like no one knows really. For instance, the motherboard was not delayed at their request as has been shown later, who tells you the rest is true? And I mean, I have yet to see any real proof of this, or this being postd anywhere besides OC3D and Semiaccurate.

EDIT: Yeah, in fact this all comes from Semiaccurate and only OC3D has linked it. Then TPU has linked to OC3D. Semiaccurate is the source = FUD and Nvidia bashing. It wouldn't surprise me that everything is false, since the whole Demerjian's article is based on the delay of the Hydra board and the rush of the one with NF200 and he even admits at the end he saw several months ago the same board he is saying it has been rushed. That is no rush at all and the delay has been explained. The rest... look an UFO...


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## imperialreign (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> No, I am not comparing them, I'm just stating how I am, so that it can be understood how I act. I do think Nvidia is doing this to protect their bussiness, but at the same time there are other reasons too that should be taken into consideration. It's really important for me to see everything from all the angles and I hate people that blindly follow wrong stablished ideas and don't make the effort to see all angls. You don't know if that is the only reason, just like no one knows really. For instance, the motherboard was not delayed at their request as has been shown later, who tells you the rest is true? And I mean, I have yet to see any real proof of this, or this being postd anywhere besides OC3D and Semiaccurate.




TBH, I think the biggest reason we see such reactions from people stems more from being jaded by nVidia's (and ATI's) practices, more-so than anything else.

We've all become so used to nVidia's hard-ball tactics and policies, it just comes across the wrong way . . . and then, looking at ATI, who behave completely opposite, it makes nVidia look even worse.

Take this situation for example - something new comes out and nVidia immediately stout "we're not supporting _that_!"  Then they go on to set their hardware up to block compatiblity with their hardware.  Honestly, that's general business practice in the PC market - look at how things have panned out between other vendors in other aspects of the market . . .

But, then you have ATI who stays quiet about this new news - and when someone finally goes to them to ask their opinion, it's vauge and overly cryptic, or runs along the lines of "no comment."  Then, ATI may or may-not block support with their hardware . . . but, thing is, they don't typically come out and say so (if they do) - they wait for everyone to find out later . . . or, they throw in some hack & slash support, just so they can say they do support it (even though it may be nowhere near effcient or effective).  Their passiveness makes nVidia look agressive and brash . . .

It's funny how the dynamic between the duo actually works - and it's been this way for the better part of the last decade . . . these actions are really nothing new.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Nov 7, 2009)

well TBH Crossfire seems to be an open standard than Nvidias, and it seems NVidia had to change tactics by introducing Physx to try and stay ahead of ATI, well Physx doesnt seem to be catching on that fast at all, even when Ageia had the boards. I would say Nvidia has done themselves in.


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## phanbuey (Nov 7, 2009)

yep... its one thing if they said "we shall not support it" that's more like the passive thing imperial mentioned.  I think its the fact that they went all out and dedicated a portion of their driver team to PREVENT the tech from working.

So instead of fixing things like the d*mn stutter in Fallout 3 with the 19x.x drivers and the fact that the second card doesn't clock down in SLI... they're focusing on peeing in someone else's cheerios.  It just seems like their strategy has complete disregard for the customer in general.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 7, 2009)

Last time I was impressed with Nvidia was during the GF4 and GF7 Series Lineups, after that they have became too stuck-up on themselves.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

imperialreign said:


> TBH, I think the biggest reason we see such reactions from people stems more from being jaded by nVidia's (and ATI's) practices, more-so than anything else.
> 
> We've all become so used to nVidia's hard-ball tactics and policies, it just comes across the wrong way . . . and then, looking at ATI, who behave completely opposite, it makes nVidia look even worse.
> 
> ...



True to an extent, but AMD has not been so quiet and has definately not played fair. They do try to look like they play fair, but I don't think they are at all. PhysX is the best example. Their reasons for declining it are completely false, because they did support Havok and although they said propietary tech must die, etc. on the one hand Havok is propietary too and on the other one the demo they did of GPU Havok was running in Stream (propietary) and not OpenCL, because they didn't have OpenCL drivers yet. On top of that, they forgot to mention that Nvidia is working with Havok too. Basically they lied, but they have managed to get away with that, because Nvidia is not saying we are supporting all those things, even they are actually supporting much more thinga than AMD. It's something that escapes my understanding tbh. AMD in that case did say we are not supporting PhysX and they did block it from running on their hardware, is there a difference if you do it on drivers or you do it by othr means? Not in my book. Now there's this thing with Hector Ruiz. I've been very aware of the false image of AMD fr long, for me it doesn't make a difference if a company does something "in your face" like Nvidia or in the shadows while your reps smile and say beautiful things that are then never fullfilled. They themselves have been engaged in a deprestigiation campaign against Nvidia, like saying everywhere they could that Nvidia doesn't support open standards like OpenCL, when in fact Nvidia had the drivers 2 months before them and have an SDK, which AMD doesn't and have Visual Studio integration and so on. But they get away with that lie, or distortion of reality, because people believe them.

This is not bashing or anything, I'm just showing that AMD is far from being the good company that pretends to be. It's just like any other company.

EDIT: Also what about Eyefinity. I don't see they have made it an open standard before using it and it's not as if they have not promoted it. I don't see them working to make it an open standard either. All I see is a very nice feature that only works on their hardware and very little chances of that being different in the future. So where did it go the mantra of open standards?


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## NympH (Nov 7, 2009)

I'm so glad i bought a 5870!

Never going to buy another nvidia card as long as i live.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

You just don't get it do you Benetanegia? These are all normal business practices. This is something that is accepted by everyone whos ever turned a dollar. You can't fight the machine my friend. No one can.


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## Mussels (Nov 7, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> No I believe it was Nvidia that disables Physx when a ATI card is recognized.



exactly. nvidia will do anything possible to ensure physX only runs on nvidia cards/systems.



Cheeseball said:


> *@TheMailMan78*
> 
> That situation just happened in recent times. Months before, NVIDIA was offering PhysX implementation to AMD/ATI cards, but they just didn't accept it. (Most likely because they wanted to work on their own Stream implementation, but as it is, it never took off.)



see below



theubersmurf said:


> Provide evidence of this claim.



exactly. THERE WAS NO PROOF. there was NEVER an official statement from nvidia or ATI, _nothing but one websites speculation_


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> You just don't get it do you Benetanegia? These are all normal business practices. This is something that is accepted by everyone whos ever turned a dollar. You can't fight the machine my friend. No one can.



Yeah, yeah, but then why only one company gets bashed for those practices? I hate haters and that's why you will always see me defending Nvidia, because no one hates other companies.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Yeah, yeah, but then why only one company gets bashed for those practices? I hate haters and that's why you will always see me defending Nvidia, because no one hates other companies.



Because thats the company thats in the news NOW. Next week it could be ATIs turn. Of course you were always quick to attack Intel so you're just as guilty as the rest.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Because thats the company thats in the news NOW. Next week it could be ATIs turn. Of course you were always quick to attack Intel so you're just as guilty as the rest.



That _now_ is been now for the past 5 years, at least. 

The difference is that there are proofs against Intel. Intel is guilty about all that I have "attacked" them for. Against the supposed and most of the times confirmed as false, Nvidia's malparactices there's usually no proof and everybody jumps the gun, even whe the proofs of inocence show up, people are more willing to believe that ALL developers lie, rather than accept Nvidia is not evil, not in that thing they thought it was at least. Examples: TWIMTBP bribing, DX10.1, PhysX, Batman AA...

Apology from the writer in OC3D for his misinformed claims:

http://www.overclock3d.net/news.php?/cpu_mainboard/nvidia_quash_msi_s_lucid_powered_big_bang_board/1



> Edit/Apology: It seems in my rush to get this article out nice and early for all of our readers, I made a beginners mistake (remember I've only been at this for a couple of weeks) and missed out a few important steps in the process.
> 
> I would like to officially apologize to SemiAccurate, my initial source for the article, and NVIDIA and MSI for my misinformed statements which cast them in a bad light. My sincerest apologies guys, I hope I haven't offended you - Alex Myers



Will anyone be able to do the same as him (and learn something in the process) if it happens that not only that, but also the bits* about the drivers turn out to be false too?

* This is all that has been said regarding the drivers:



> We heard through the grapevine at IDF that Nvidia was not happy about Lucid, and was going to break Lucid's Hydra chip at the driver level to protect its SLI tax.



That's Charlie Demerjian... (I'll make a stop here, so that the info is processed) saying through the grapevine, not even mentioning the usual "sources have told me" no, through the grapevine.  That's as accurate info as it gets. Come on...

And at IDF on top of that, like there is place with more Nvidia haters nowadays you know, a very truthful information...

It's obvious that what generated that CD article was the motherboard delay and the rush of the NF200 one and not the thing about the driver that is just mildly mentioned. The motherboard portion has been confirmed as false and the other thing just doesn't hold water anymore, until true proofs are brought. But we will still hear from this for years to come.


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## phanbuey (Nov 7, 2009)

True... i actually think its been even longer than that... ever since they bought 3dfx out and then made them go *poof* along with glide.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

phanbuey said:


> True... i actually think its been even longer than that... ever since they bought 3dfx out and then made them go *poof* along with glide.



Yeah true, I was thinkking about that too. I was one of those that hated Nvidia for that, I kept my Voddoo 3 until I couldn't justify its use anymore. It went from main PC to lesser important PC until it just didn't make sense. I still have it somewhere, I believe, and it's the only old card that I have kept.

Anyway, tbh 3DFx was almost dead by then, just like Ageia and they did support it a bit more, maybe more than if 3Dfx had gone bankrupt.


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## runnin17 (Nov 7, 2009)

nVidia is for douchebags!!!!!!!


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## Mussels (Nov 7, 2009)

runnin17 said:


> nVidia is for douchebags!!!!!!!



while_ they_ are being douches, caling nvidia users douchebags wont go well here. play nice... you never know how many moderators here use nvidia hardware...


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> That _now_ is been now for the past 5 years, at least.
> 
> The difference is that there are proofs against Intel. Intel is guilty about all that I have "attacked" them for. Against the supposed and most of the times confirmed as false, Nvidia's malparactices there's usually no proof and everybody jumps the gun, even whe the proofs of inocence show up, people are more willing to believe that ALL developers lie, rather than accept Nvidia is not evil, not in that thing they thought it was at least. Examples: TWIMTBP bribing, DX10.1, PhysX, Batman AA...



Well you have a selective memory then. ATI was accused of price fixing. Oh yeah Nvidia was also. And guess what? They settled out of court. As for the Intel thing we wont go into it.


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## Kantastic (Nov 7, 2009)

Personally, I feel that as of now the only thing Nvidia is good for is bringing down HD 5K prices when they release Fermi. I haven't been building computers long enough to take sides but I still can't see myself buying a Nvidia card. >_>


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Well you have a selective memory then. ATI was accused of price fixing. Oh yeah Nvidia was also. And guess what? They settled out of court. As for the Intel thing we wont go into it.



Ati was accused of price fixing, yes, but there's no been generalised attacks from the people in forums for that. In fact I remember that and when it was made public I remember many people thinking and spreading it was Nvidia who forced them into that. When at that time Ati pretty much used to outsell Nvidia on discrete graphics and they had the OEM market where Nvidia didn't have a lot, so they were not the weak ones back then. But that's not the only thing: they didn't suffer the same treatment as Nvidia when they cheated 3Dmark, they were not accused of cheating on drivers when the driver that improved performance on FarCry 2 broke textures to the same degree as Nvidia was cursed for the same issue in Crysis...

Anyway, I'm not making the point that Ati/AMD is evil, I'm making the point that Nvidia is not as evil as some people are devoted to believe and make others believe. And if they are, they are definately not doing the things they say Nvidia is doing, they might be evil, but not for those things that have been proved wrong. Maybe of something like the price fixing thing, if they are doing something "evil" we definately don't know it and probably will never know. And at the end of the day what I am complaining about is that, that people in forums accuse without proofs and that things spread and become an effect similar to the most stupid myths that are tested in Mythbusters, but are myths that people strongly believe in, like if it was true, because they have heard a lot about, because of word of mouth. IMO that's pathetic.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> Ati was accused of price fixing, yes, but there's no been generalised attacks from the people in forums for that. In fact I remember that and when it was made public I remember many people thinking and spreading it was Nvidia who forced them into that. When at that time Ati pretty much used to outsell Nvidia on discrete graphics and they had the OEM market where Nvidia didn't have a lot, so they were not the weak ones back then. But that's not the only thing: they didn't suffer the same treatment as Nvidia when they cheated 3Dmark, they were not accused of cheating on drivers when the driver that improved performance on FarCry 2 broke textures to the same degree as Nvidia was cursed for the same issue in Crysis...
> 
> Anyway, I'm not making the point that Ati/AMD is evil, I'm making the point that Nvidia is not as evil as some people are devoted to believe and make others believe. And if they are, they are definately not doing the things they say Nvidia is doing, they might be evil, but not for those things that have been proved wrong. Maybe of something like the price fixing thing, if they are doing something "evil" we definately don't know it and probably will never know. And at the end of the day what I am complaining about is that, that people in forums accuse without proofs and that things spread and become an effect similar to the most stupid myths that are tested in Mythbusters, but are myths that people strongly believe in, like if it was true, because they have heard a lot about, because of word of mouth. IMO that's pathetic.



Dude you are going to hear more bitching about Nvidia simply because more people own them. They hold a larger market share. Its commonsense.


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## imperialreign (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> True to an extent, but AMD has not been so quiet and has definately not played fair. They do try to look like they play fair, but I don't think they are at all. PhysX is the best example. Their reasons for declining it are completely false, because they did support Havok and although they said propietary tech must die, etc. on the one hand Havok is propietary too and on the other one the demo they did of GPU Havok was running in Stream (propietary) and not OpenCL, because they didn't have OpenCL drivers yet. On top of that, they forgot to mention that Nvidia is working with Havok too. Basically they lied, but they have managed to get away with that, because Nvidia is not saying we are supporting all those things, even they are actually supporting much more thinga than AMD. It's something that escapes my understanding tbh. AMD in that case did say we are not supporting PhysX and they did block it from running on their hardware, is there a difference if you do it on drivers or you do it by othr means? Not in my book. Now there's this thing with Hector Ruiz. I've been very aware of the false image of AMD fr long, for me it doesn't make a difference if a company does something "in your face" like Nvidia or in the shadows while your reps smile and say beautiful things that are then never fullfilled. They themselves have been engaged in a deprestigiation campaign against Nvidia, like saying everywhere they could that Nvidia doesn't support open standards like OpenCL, when in fact Nvidia had the drivers 2 months before them and have an SDK, which AMD doesn't and have Visual Studio integration and so on. But they get away with that lie, or distortion of reality, because people believe them.
> 
> This is not bashing or anything, I'm just showing that AMD is far from being the good company that pretends to be. It's just like any other company.
> 
> EDIT: Also what about Eyefinity. I don't see they have made it an open standard before using it and it's not as if they have not promoted it. I don't see them working to make it an open standard either. All I see is a very nice feature that only works on their hardware and very little chances of that being different in the future. So where did it go the mantra of open standards?




I agree - both companies are quite bad about their smoke & mirrors . . . it's just that nVidia tends to stick out more in people's heads simply for how straight-forward they are; whereas ATI have always been fairly quiet about what they're up to.

Regarding ATI's OpenCL support - I'd want to say that their late driver set was more to do with the cutbacks the company had made to keep their tail afloat during the first half of this year (it was rather rough on everyone) . . . but, TBH, I think it was more to do with their focus on Stream . . . which, ATI are pulling an nVidia with that technology.  They're doing just like what green did with PhysX/CUDA, release it free with their drivers, and release the SDKs free . . . meanwhile, pushing software devs to pick up on it, while at the same time setting the drivers up so that Stream will only work on ATI/AMD hardware.

<sigh>

Someone should write a sitcom based off the 3-ring circus known as the PC video hardware market.


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## inferKNOX (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> ... So without knowing the real reasons for this, it's just assuming that Nvidia did something wrong all the time, "because they did it in the past" and then the same crap as always follows, Assassin's Creed, etc....
> 
> A lot has been discussed about AA in Batman and the same arguments have been used. The same happened with PhysX and it's always people judging before knowing facts....


Nobody is talking about those games, PhysX or anything but Hydra here other than you.


phanbuey said:


> yeah well... if everyone boycotts nvidia, then we won't need hydra in the first place :/
> 
> Whoever said that AMD would shun HYDRA as well was dead on.  Intel would probably be next in line because their chipset division would be butthurt over this.  I just hope an antitrust suit forces them to open up the market, unlikely, but it would be the only thing that would work.


I don't think AMD and Intel need to shun hydra, since it'd be beneficial for Intel because their Larabees will be able to be used in a system with an ATi/nV card which will make people more likely to buy the Larabees to add to their systems to experiment with, while having the ATi/nV cards for serious business. As for AMD, crossfire doesn't carry a premium for manufacturers + Intel boards already support it, so they have no loss to make. In fact they will benefit in that the only argument against ATi run systems will be dispelled, which is lack of PhysX since nV cards will be able to be run in the same system.
I think if Intel and AMD stick with Hydra, then they'll muscle nV into having to support it or face being... well, obsolete.


phanbuey said:


> I apologize to any children I abused, or puppies that I might have kicked in the making of that post.


classic


Benetanegia said:


> It's really important for me to see everything from all the angles and I hate people that blindly follow wrong stablished ideas and don't make the effort to see all angls.


Nobody needs to many angles when dealing with a situation. I don't need to know how a car engine works to know the seats make me uncomfortable, even if the engine is the reason for that. I am a consumer, thus I expect the necessary service and/or goods rendered, not be told what I need by those I buy from, I was blessed with a brain for that.


Benetanegia said:


> Also what about Eyefinity. I don't see they have made it an open standard before using it and it's not as if they have not promoted it. I don't see them working to make it an open standard either. All I see is a very nice feature that only works on their hardware and very little chances of that being different in the future. So where did it go the mantra of open standards?


Eyefinity is possible for ATi because of the 5xxx GPU architecture, it's not a standard, neither proprietary nor open; it's a feature.

PS, Benetanegia & pr0n inspector, please fill in your specs.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

inferKNOX said:


> Nobody is talking about those games, PhysX or anything but Hydra here other than you.



Read the thread again and pay attention, please...

In fact this is as far as the thread got before PhysX was mentioned:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1624229&postcount=2

POSTCOUNT=*2*



inferKNOX said:


> Nobody needs to many angles when dealing with a situation. I don't need to know how a car engine works to know the seats make me uncomfortable, even if the engine is the reason for that. I am a consumer, thus I expect the necessary service and/or goods rendered, not be told what I need by those I buy from, I was blessed with a brain for that.



Yet you are not using your brain, because you are blindly following an skewed vision. Half the article has been confirmed as false, to the point that the writer has apologized, and although Chrlie Demerjian is incapable of doing such thing as apologize, he has admitted to see the NF200 board several months ago. But you are still here complaining about the same thing as if it was 100% truth. A thing that is probably just false. Yes you need to look at things from mole angles if you want to be smart.



> Eyefinity is possible for ATi because of the 5xxx GPU architecture, it's not a standard, neither proprietary nor open; it's a feature.



AND that was my point, AMD loves to say they only support open standards for the good of all consumers, but when it's time to standardize something they have created they are nowhere near to "share" it. And in fact, they are promoting it as an AMD exclusive feature, more than Nvidia ever promoted PhysX or 3D Vision. It's just hypocrite to do so.

- PhysX is a feature too, one that only works on Nvidia cards, because AMD wanted that too, so where does it come all the complaints then?

- Antialiasing in BAtman is a feature too, one created specifically for Nvidia cards, because the UE3 doesn't support AA, so why complaints?


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> AND that was my point, AMD loves to say they *only support open standards* for the good of all consumers, but when it's time to standardize something they have created they are nowhere near to "share" it. And in fact, they are promoting it as an AMD exclusive feature, more than Nvidia ever promoted PhysX or 3D Vision. It's just hypocrite to do so.
> 
> - PhysX is a feature too, one that only works on Nvidia cards, because AMD wanted that too, so where does it come all the complaints then?
> 
> - Antialiasing in BAtman is a feature too, one created specifically for Nvidia cards, because the UE3 doesn't support AA, so why complaints?



 When did they ever say they only support open standards?


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## PaulieG (Nov 7, 2009)

Play nice guys, or I see an infractions coming. Let's not turn this into a fanboy thread. Both ATI and Nvidia love to play games in order to gain market share. It's the nature of competitive big business. Nvidia has been at the top of the food chain for awhile, so they look like the bully. However, rest assured that ATI would be trying to control the destiny of other companies that affect their bottom line, if they have a reason to, and feel they can get away with it. There are no heroes and villians here. Just companies trying to hold a market share, and sometimes its ruthless.


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 7, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> Play nice guys, or I see an infractions coming. Let's not turn this into a fanboy thread. Both ATI and Nvidia love to play games in order to gain market share. It's the nature of competitive big business. Nvidia has been at the top of the food chain for awhile, so they look like the bully. However, rest assured that ATI would be trying to control the destiny of other companies that affect their bottom line, if they have a reason to, and feel they can get away with it. There are no heroes and villians here. Just companies trying to hold a market share, and sometimes its ruthless.



QFT. This summed it up perfectly.


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## wolf (Nov 7, 2009)

^ +1 I could not agree more.

It's called Business.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 7, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> Play nice guys, or I see an infractions coming. Let's not turn this into a fanboy thread. Both ATI and Nvidia love to play games in order to gain market share. It's the nature of competitive big business. Nvidia has been at the top of the food chain for awhile, so they look like the bully. However, rest assured that ATI would be trying to control the destiny of other companies that affect their bottom line, if they have a reason to, and feel they can get away with it. There are no heroes and villians here. Just companies trying to hold a market share, and sometimes its ruthless.



That's the point I'm making from the start. From the start of the off-topic conversation I mean.


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 7, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> the eye in the nvidia logo is an "I" invidia means envy in latin. I think you're right that is probably is nvidia, but I prefer it the other way.



I agree Mike. 

I prefer Mike over theubersmurf, and since we get to call things whatever we prefer I'll stick to Mike. Thank you for your understanding.


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## PaulieG (Nov 7, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> I agree Mike.
> 
> I prefer Mike over theubersmurf, and since we get to call things whatever we prefer I'll stick to Mike. Thank you for your understanding.



LOL. You always have such a unique way of making a point.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 7, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> I agree Mike.
> 
> I prefer Mike over theubersmurf, and since we get to call things whatever we prefer I'll stick to Mike. Thank you for your understanding.


That works  You got my name right 

But you know what, you're right, instead of referring to them by a name I made up...I'll refer to them as what they are, from now on I'm calling them "Little Intel". Trying to foist proprietary standards on everybody as a general standard, using a ham fisted method of dealing with people who jeopardize their technologies place in the market, using their market share to do it...Seems apt.


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## DonInKansas (Nov 7, 2009)

SHUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN the nonbelievers!

That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the title.


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## imperialreign (Nov 7, 2009)

Paulieg said:


> Play nice guys, or I see an infractions coming. Let's not turn this into a fanboy thread. Both ATI and Nvidia love to play games in order to gain market share. It's the nature of competitive big business. Nvidia has been at the top of the food chain for awhile, so they look like the bully. However, rest assured that ATI would be trying to control the destiny of other companies that affect their bottom line, if they have a reason to, and feel they can get away with it. There are no heroes and villians here. Just companies trying to hold a market share, and sometimes its ruthless.



100% agreed - and with the way the market has been moving more in ATI's favor since the release of the HD4000 series, and the success the HD5000 series have been gaining, we're starting to see ATI kicking their "stunts" up a notch, too.

I'd bet good money that if ATI completely takes the upper hand in sales over nVidia's upcoming series - we'll see the tables turn . . . that is, ATI becoming more aggressive in their tactics, and nVidia playing it more quietly.


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## Edito (Nov 7, 2009)

I think the world has problems with Japaneses but i will support till the end.

Hydra is with no doubt a good thing but don't forget this is business and in this field company's use to fight with all they got and nvidia is trying to protect they cake and everybody here in the skin of nvidia will do the same thing im trying to tell that they are the good guys all the way its not that but this is business.

Who complains about intel not supporting USB 3.0??? nobody 

Let them fight with all they got in the end will be good for us this is what drives the tech forward and i want to be able to connect different GPUs like my actual GTX285 + GT300 with no probs but please don't forget that this is business...


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## OneCool (Nov 8, 2009)

Edito said:


> Let them fight with all they got in the end will be good for us this is what drives the tech forward and* i want to be able to connect different GPUs like my actual GTX285 + GT300 with no probs* but please don't forget that this is business...



Thats what this thread has been on about for 8 pages.nvidia isnt going to let that happen.

There drivers will "break" the Hydra connections rendering the GPU not functional on Hydra installed motherboards.

Im about sick of nvidia doing this kind of bullshit.I guess thats why I havnt supported them (bought any of their products) in 4 years now.


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## Yukikaze (Nov 8, 2009)

Does anyone know if Crossfire support is being charged for by AMD, or is it completely free for say, Intel, to introduce it to their motherboards ?

I hate this very promising idea to go down the drain because of NV's business practices, but I suspect that this exactly what will happen. I also suspect that there is nothing anyone can do about it. I also hold absolutely no faith in any idea of a boycott, and I also think just about everyone so riled up about it here will quickly buy up the GT300 cards if they perform well and are decently priced.

Of course, if Lucid paid X dollars for each chip sold to nVidia, I bet nVidia would very quickly adopt it and support it.


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

Yukikaze said:


> Does anyone know if Crossfire support is being charged for by AMD, or is it completely free for say, Intel, to introduce it to their motherboards ?
> 
> I hate this very promising idea to go down the drain because of NV's business practices, but I suspect that this exactly what will happen. I also suspect that there is nothing anyone can do about it. I also hold absolutely no faith in any idea of a boycott, and I also think just about everyone so riled up about it here will quickly buy up the GT300 cards if they perform well and are decently priced.
> 
> Of course, if Lucid paid X dollars for each chip sold to nVidia, I bet nVidia would very quickly adopt it and support it.



free as far as anyone knows. Remeber that crossfire has been available on AMD (pre merger) chipsets, intel, and ALI/ULI - maybe more i dont even know of

nvidia has been with their chipsets and their chipets only (until x58)


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## shevanel (Nov 8, 2009)

People say fuck nvidia i want hydra. then you want hydra so you can  get more  nvidia so you can run gpus of different nvidia models together?

I am missing something here?


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

shevanel said:


> People say fuck nvidia i want hydra. then you want hydra so you can  get more  nvidia so you can run gpus of different nvidia models together?
> 
> I am missing something here?



ATi  users? lol


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## Disparia (Nov 8, 2009)

shevanel said:


> People say fuck nvidia i want hydra. then you want hydra so you can  get more  nvidia so you can run gpus of different nvidia models together?
> 
> I am missing something here?



As a consumer loyal to no company, I'll "turn on a dime".

nVidia will play, and I'll consider their cards in a Hydra system.

nVidia will not play, and I'll pair my existing 4870 with one or more 5xxx.

ATI and nVidia won't play, Hydra dies, f' them both, but I'll most likely move on with with ATI (triple output).

ATI won't play and nVidia does, f' ATI, I'm back to nVidia.


Of course everything is wrapped in one big "IF" statement, does Hydra perform adequately at  all? Does it null a feature that I want/need? It could possibly come down to "f' Lucid".


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## smuggler (Nov 9, 2009)

*No need to get hyped. market will sort it out if Hydra is good enough.*

I am not sure about my path of logic but I believe it will not matter if Nvidia shuns Hydra. here is what i think.

The latest Nvidia GPU came out months ago. So their drivers have matured enough there will be no immediate need to update drivers.  And most probably Lucid tested Hydra using those drivers. That means Hydra works with current Nvidia drivers.

Old Nvidia users will still have the option to use their existing Nvidia GPU with an ATI 5800. And if they are happy with the results, next time they change to a new GPU it will be an ATI since they can use the existing ATI with the next generation.

That will hurt Nvidia's sales and in order to not to lose market share Nvidia will give way to Hydra in future drivers.

And if that works Hydra will speed up the release of new hardware from Ati or Nvidia (really new technology or tweaking of same stuff) because these companies will feed the need to be the best in the market.

Am i missing something here?


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## kylew (Nov 9, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> True to an extent, but AMD has not been so quiet and has definately not played fair. They do try to look like they play fair, but I don't think they are at all. PhysX is the best example. Their reasons for declining it are completely false, because they did support Havok and although they said propietary tech must die, etc. on the one hand Havok is propietary too and on the other one the demo they did of GPU Havok was running in Stream (propietary) and not OpenCL, because they didn't have OpenCL drivers yet. On top of that, they forgot to mention that Nvidia is working with Havok too. Basically they lied, but they have managed to get away with that, because Nvidia is not saying we are supporting all those things, even they are actually supporting much more thinga than AMD. It's something that escapes my understanding tbh. AMD in that case did say we are not supporting PhysX and they did block it from running on their hardware, is there a difference if you do it on drivers or you do it by othr means? Not in my book. Now there's this thing with Hector Ruiz. I've been very aware of the false image of AMD fr long, for me it doesn't make a difference if a company does something "in your face" like Nvidia or in the shadows while your reps smile and say beautiful things that are then never fullfilled. They themselves have been engaged in a deprestigiation campaign against Nvidia, like saying everywhere they could that Nvidia doesn't support open standards like OpenCL, when in fact Nvidia had the drivers 2 months before them and have an SDK, which AMD doesn't and have Visual Studio integration and so on. But they get away with that lie, or distortion of reality, because people believe them.
> 
> This is not bashing or anything, I'm just showing that AMD is far from being the good company that pretends to be. It's just like any other company.
> 
> EDIT: Also what about Eyefinity. I don't see they have made it an open standard before using it and it's not as if they have not promoted it. I don't see them working to make it an open standard either. All I see is a very nice feature that only works on their hardware and very little chances of that being different in the future. So where did it go the mantra of open standards?



There's nothing stopping nVidia implementing their own "version" of Eyefinity.

Eyefinity is just a name, and the name is the only thing owned by ATi itself, the actual result of the feature (running games across multiple monitors) isn't "Owned" by anyone as such.

If nVidia don't add this feature themselves, nVidia users still have the option of using TH2G.


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## grimeleven (Nov 10, 2009)

Zomg people check this out... Hydra does indeed seem to be valid 100% scaling in performance http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/644/benchycopy.jpg

Using 3x GTX295 with http://www.elsa-jp.co.jp/english/products/pes/vridge_x100_quad8/index.html

Crysis 191FPS avg...


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## erocker (Nov 10, 2009)

grimeleven said:


> Zomg people check this out... Hydra does indeed seem to be valid 100% scaling in performance http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/644/benchycopy.jpg
> 
> Using 3x GTX295 with http://www.elsa-jp.co.jp/english/products/pes/vridge_x100_quad8/index.html
> 
> Crysis 191FPS avg...



That is indeed impressive. 84fps minimum!


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## MilkyWay (Nov 10, 2009)

Well to the OP what we are looking at is nVIDIA losing out due to intel. Intel has decided to use its own chipsets and not buy any nVIDIA chipsets, with hydra intel can do crossfire or sli without ATi and nVIDIA.

I think that somehow you would have to buy a license for those techs because your practically stealing nVIDIA and ATi tech without asking. ATi are lucky they can make their own chipsets for AMD products but who do nVIDIA have to make for well AMD and that's it really and they cant afford to support only its main competitor.

AH! anyone remember the days where nVIDIA used to be big pals with intel, now intel is making its own graphics chip and can dump ati and nvidia but get the same tech.

If i was nVIDIA i would find some way to sue this hydra chipmaker to get some licensing from it or try stop it, its practically killing nVIDIA.


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## erocker (Nov 10, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> If i was nVIDIA i would find some way to sue this hydra chipmaker to get some licensing from it or try stop it, its practically killing nVIDIA.



Lucid is making a chip that has nothing to do with Nvidia or ATi. What if I wanted to put together a couple of S3 cards? Nvidia is killing themselves from becoming complacent with their products. Don't worry though, Nvidia is working hard that their cards don't work with the Hydra chip to protect what little they have left. Perhaps Nvidia should try a more business freindly approach, because right now they are alienating their business partners and consumers. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of Nvidia's partners jump ship!


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## Solaris17 (Nov 10, 2009)

erocker said:


> Lucid is making a chip that has nothing to do with Nvidia or ATi. What if I wanted to put together a couple of S3 cards? Nvidia is killing themselves from becoming complacent with their products. Don't worry though, Nvidia is working hard that their cards don't work with the Hydra chip to protect what little they have left.



which if it is like their attempt to stop a physx card with an ATI primary they will fail miserably within the first 3 days.


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## MilkyWay (Nov 10, 2009)

erocker said:


> Lucid is making a chip that has nothing to do with Nvidia or ATi. What if I wanted to put together a couple of S3 cards? Nvidia is killing themselves from becoming complacent with their products. Don't worry though, Nvidia is working hard that their cards don't work with the Hydra chip to protect what little they have left. Perhaps Nvidia should try a more business freindly approach, because right now they are alienating their business partners and consumers. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of Nvidia's partners jump ship!



BUT the chip enables crossfire and sli which are ATi and nVIDIA technologies, its like having to ask permission to use music in a video or something.

I agree about them needing to work together because simply put intel will shut them out so the either work together, leave the market or struggle the way they have been.

Unless there are laws that allow them to use those techs or no laws that stop them.


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## Kantastic (Nov 10, 2009)

Would it be possible to use Lucid Hydra on a motherboard that doesn't have it onboard through a PCI adapter or something similar?


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## erocker (Nov 10, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> BUT the chip enables crossfire and sli



No it doesn't. No "crossfire" or "sli" drivers are needed. Again, what would two S3 or Matrox cards be called? Why hasn't ATi or S3 or some other off the wall chip maker come out and say they aren't going to make their product work with this? Whatever, I'm done explaining it, I no longer care. I was looking forward to the big bang MSI board with hydra, but low and behold, it's delayed and what did they release instead? A "big bang" board with a nf200 chip on it. F*cking useless. I just made a decision. I will no longer support Nvidia or any of their products. *I'm done discussing it. Bye bye.*


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## TheMailMan78 (Nov 10, 2009)

erocker said:


> No it doesn't. No "crossfire" or "sli" drivers are needed. Again, what would two S3 or Matrox cards be called? Why hasn't ATi or S3 or some other off the wall chip maker come out and say they aren't going to make their product work with this? Whatever, I'm done explaining it, I no longer care. I was looking forward to the big bang MSI board with hydra, but low and behold, it's delayed and what did they release instead? A "big bang" board with a nf200 chip on it. F*cking useless. I just made a decision. I will no longer support Nvidia or any of their products. I'm done discussing it. Bye bye.



It was delayed? Where did you hear that?


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## inferKNOX (Nov 10, 2009)

I think I'm with you there erocker, these tactics just plain stink.


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## kylew (Nov 11, 2009)

erocker said:


> No it doesn't. No "crossfire" or "sli" drivers are needed. Again, what would two S3 or Matrox cards be called? Why hasn't ATi or S3 or some other off the wall chip maker come out and say they aren't going to make their product work with this? Whatever, I'm done explaining it, I no longer care. I was looking forward to the big bang MSI board with hydra, but low and behold, it's delayed and what did they release instead? A "big bang" board with a nf200 chip on it. F*cking useless. I just made a decision. I will no longer support Nvidia or any of their products. *I'm done discussing it. Bye bye.*



This is becoming the norm, my feelings exactly. I really do not like nVidia and how they run.

Their CEO says it all, the man looks like a nutjob. Always seems to look really angry and aggressive.


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## kylew (Nov 11, 2009)

MilkyWay said:


> BUT the chip enables crossfire and sli which are ATi and nVIDIA technologies, its like having to ask permission to use music in a video or something.
> 
> I agree about them needing to work together because simply put intel will shut them out so the either work together, leave the market or struggle the way they have been.
> 
> Unless there are laws that allow them to use those techs or no laws that stop them.



You do not understand what Crossfire and SLi is.

They are technologies, or more, software implementations that allow multiple GPUs to work together on rendering the same scene in a game.

The technology itself isn't the usage of multiple GPUs to render a game, rather the way they're linked together.

Lucid Hyrda ISN'T Crossfire, nor is it SLi as it's not using Crossfire or SLi software.

It's like calling Mac OSX "Windows" because they essentially do the same thing (provide an interface for computer hardware in the most basic terms).

It has ZERO to do with ATi and nVidia's own technologies. The only reason it seems like it does, is because it provides a better multiGPU solution than what ATi and nVidia currently offer.

In reality, you could call this a Direct X task managing processor.

It works with Direct X, not the graphics cards themselves, it's an intelligent method of delegating work to different GPUs to gain the best performance out of Direct X based hardware.

nVidia are just hurting themselves.

Seriously, say people are running 2 ATi GPUs in a PC and are getting 100% perfect scaling relative to the performance of the additional cards they're putting in, who's then going to want to buy an nVidia card to use in SLi when the chances are you'd be paying more money for a lot less performance.

I think SLi and Crossfire are great, but they aren't perfect and they have a lot of issues when you compare it to the Lucid Hyrda chip.

If it's embraced by ATi, nVidia will be forced to give in and allow the chip to work with GeFarce cards if they want people to use their cards in MultiGPU setups.

In the long run, what's gonna benefit them more? Selling more chipsets/SLi licenses? Not selling any SLi Chipsets and a lot less GeFarce cards because they don't work with Hyrdra set ups?


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## DaedalusHelios (Nov 11, 2009)

I seriously doubt Nvidia would make sure it would not work. I think they are trying to say they would not offer to help develop the technology because they feel they don't stand to benefit from it by doing so. Nvidia's drivers have always been good from my experience and I run through about 10 cards a year just playing with the tech from both companies. We have yet to see if the Hydra tech is stable in every game with every set of drivers etc. At this point there is no guarantee that Hydra is that great TBH. If Nvidia thinks it will not make money off of supporting a venture into a certain market it won't do so. Companies only care about the bottom line no matter what. Its called capitalism.

That being said, I think Nvidia has misjudged the situation because I believe both companies stand to benefit from the Hydra concept regardless of its current effectiveness. Taking sides on which company you love, or love to hate, is childish and only clouds your judgement from evaluating what your best choice is at any given time. Lets leave emotion out of debating consumer choices. Its not a bad tactic, its a bad business move. (Just like the MW2 for PC not having dedicated servers.)


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## Mussels (Nov 11, 2009)

erocker said:


> No it doesn't. No "crossfire" or "sli" drivers are needed. Again, what would two S3 or Matrox cards be called?



exactly.

SLI and crossfire arent used, each card thinks its rendering its own 3D window - you wont need to link the cards with bridges or anything


the only thing people seem to be missing is that features will need to match up between the cards - i keep seeing people talking about linking ATI and Nv, or a 4xx0 ATI card with a 5xx0

if you were to run batman arkham asylum with one of each, unless Nvidia showed up as the primary GPU you'd get no AA - not an nvidia card (EG, if it shows a lucid hydra as the default GPU or something)


If you were to mix and match cards, it would fall back to the lowest common denominator for features - EG, a GTS 260, a 4870, and a 5870 in hydra would be stuck at DX10.0 (otherwise one third of your image would have DX11, and the others would be missing bits)


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## erocker (Nov 11, 2009)

DaedalusHelios said:


> Taking sides on which company you love, or love to hate, is childish and only clouds your judgement from evaluating what your best choice is at any given time. Lets leave emotion out of debating consumer choices.



If you are reffering to me, I have very little emotion. I decide which company gets my dollar, nothing more. Nvidia doesn't get any more of my money, not based upon my emotions but by Nvidia's long history of bad business practices of which I as a consumer have been "screwed over" more than once. They do make great video cards. Well.. they _have _made great video cards.


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## DaedalusHelios (Nov 11, 2009)

erocker said:


> If you are reffering to me, I have very little emotion. I decide which company gets my dollar, nothing more.



But you just said this:



erocker said:


> Whatever, I'm done explaining it, I no longer care. I was looking forward to the big bang MSI board with hydra, but low and behold, it's delayed and what did they release instead? A "big bang" board with a nf200 chip on it. F*cking useless. I just made a decision. I will no longer support Nvidia or any of their products. *I'm done discussing it. Bye bye.*



I am just saying it appears like you are really getting frustrated about a company making bad business moves. It was a decision made by MSI to delay or change a boards design. I would think if the Hydra was so perfect they would have put it on the board and made a ton of money with it on the enthusiast community. If it was mature enough to do well on the enthusiast market and they had the chips ready it would have come out right?

I just don't want to see people get mad and shun any company especially if they have to moderate heated discussions between zealots of both sides on a regular basis. I just want you to take the "high road" thats all. You are a great guy and this community wouldn't be the same without you.


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## erocker (Nov 11, 2009)

Nah, just frustrated I can't have my Hydra board when it was supposed to be released. I like to play with stuff. I'm a moderator yes, but I'm also a consumer like everyone else. I don't expect everyone to follow my feelings or accept my opinions due to my status on a forum. What makes one happy may make another the opposite and vice versa. I feel the right to bash any company. I however do not have the right to bash other people that don't feel the same way as I, and I expect the same in return. Brand names mean nothing, their actions do. Fanboyism as a whole is an idiotic notion. It's nothing more than worship of a person, place, thing or idea. Since I don't use Nvidia I may be marked as being biased or being a fanboy of a competing company which isn't the truth. As a moderator, that would be a bad thing. It's a personal choice however. I choose not to buy a product from one company due to the paradigm of morals I set upon myself through life experience, education, upbringing, etc. This is different for all of us. I moderate according to the guidelines of this forum, and while the guidelines aren't always clear, the paradigms of my life are, which help form a basis of my decision making overall. Generally it works well, but once in a while things clash. When things clash, conversation, discussion, enlightenment, education and understanding is the next step. Anything can be worked out, there is common ground everywhere and once paradigms are shed, one can take a step onto that common ground.


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## Mussels (Nov 11, 2009)

erocker said:


> Nah, just frustrated I can't have my Hydra board when it was supposed to be released. I like to play with stuff. I'm a moderator yes, but I'm also a consumer like everyone else. I don't expect everyone to follow my feelings or accept my opinions due to my status on a forum. What makes one happy may make another the opposite and vice versa. I feel the right to bash any company. I however do not have the right to bash other people that don't feel the same way as I, and I expect the same in return. Brand names mean nothing, their actions do. Fanboyism as a whole is an idiotic notion. It's nothing more than worship of a person, place, thing or idea. Since I don't use Nvidia I may be marked as being biased or being a fanboy of a competing company which isn't the truth. As a moderator, that would be a bad thing. It's a personal choice however. I choose not to buy a product from one company due to the paradigm of morals I set upon myself through life experience, education, upbringing, etc. This is different for all of us. I moderate according to the guidelines of this forum, and while the guidelines aren't always clear, the paradigms of my life are, which help form a basis of my decision making overall. Generally it works well, but once in a while things clash. When things clash, conversation, discussion, enlightenment, education and understanding is the next step. Anything can be worked out, there is common ground everywhere and once paradigms are shed, one can take a step onto that common ground.




A+

one of your best english essays to date


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## inferKNOX (Nov 11, 2009)

Mussels said:


> if you were to run batman arkham asylum with one of each, unless Nvidia showed up as the primary GPU you'd get no AA - not an nvidia card (EG, if it shows a lucid hydra as the default GPU or something)


Wouldn't it be cool if the Hydra based mobos had DVI/VGA/HDMI ports that you connect your monitor to, then you could switch around your primary GPU to suit whatever situation?
Well it's likely that if it takes off, which is probable if both Intel & ATi support it, then development will start to cover all these more... intricate issues and ultimately give a brilliant degree of inter-connectivity features.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 11, 2009)

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17934/1



> When asked for comment on this story, Nvidia spokesman Ken Brown told us that Nvidia welcomes new technology and innovation, especially those that improve gaming, and said he wasn't aware of Nvidia playing any role in the Big Bang Fuzion delay. Brown reiterated Nvidia's long-standing position that what Lucid is attempting to do is "very ambitious," "an enormous technological challenge," a position the firm has rather curiously communicated at every opportunity. Furthermore, though, he confirmed to us that Nvidia will not block its partners from producing motherboards that incorporate Lucid's technology.





> For its part, MSI issued a statement here (at the bottom of the page) citing a two-fold reason for the delay related not to the Hydra hardware but the drivers: the need for better optimization and stability in Windows 7 and in multi-vendor GPU configs.





> Everyone involved seems to agree that the Hydra 200 hardware is ready to go. Based on our brief hands-on experience with the Hydra in Lucid's offices, though, we think MSI's trepidation about the drivers may be warranted. Lucid gave us a preview of the mixed-vendor mode in action, and predictably, we ran into a minor glitch: the display appeared to be very dark, as if the gamma or brightness were set improperly, in DirectX 10 applications. This was a preview of that nascent functionality, though, so such things were expected at this stage.





> More troubling was the obvious visual corruption we saw in DirectX 9 games when using an all-AMD mix of a Radeon HD 4980 and a Radeon HD 4770.





> Belz seemed surprised when he asked what percentage of prospective Hydra buyers might wish to run Windows 7 immediately and we answered, "Uhh... 99%."



Clearly Hydra was not prepared for launch yet.

Performance figures look promising *when working properly* though.


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## DaedalusHelios (Nov 11, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> http://techreport.com/articles.x/17934/1
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Thanks for the info. Thats what I was suspecting, that it wasn't a mature enough technology to stand up to the almost error free design of Crossfire and SLI that we have come to expect. I would hate for people to buy a new tech only to have glitches around every corner. I am sure the Hydra people did not show a random example of Hydra in action. They probably showed games that were the most functional for obvious reasons.


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## inferKNOX (Nov 11, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> http://techreport.com/articles.x/17934/1
> 
> Clearly Hydra was not prepared for launch yet.
> 
> Performance figures look promising *when working properly* though.



Look Benetanegia, although it's undoubtedly possible that this is some big misunderstanding that pop-up out of nowhere, it seems much more like people being silenced in the wake of bad press. Recanting statements, MSI's explanations & sudden talk of admiring Lucid seems more like corporate strong-arming coupled with a quick injection of ambiguity to relax the public upheaval. If they support Hydra that's great, that's what we want after all, anything beyond that is simply up to R&D to correct, and with support from all parties it will be corrected and we, the consumers will win. 


> More troubling was the obvious visual corruption we saw in DirectX 9 games when using an all-AMD mix of a *Radeon HD 4980* and a Radeon HD 4770.


4980? Where can I get one of those?
lol... jk


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## Benetanegia (Nov 11, 2009)

inferKNOX said:


> Look Benetanegia, although it's undoubtedly possible that this is some big misunderstanding that pop-up out of nowhere, it seems much more like people being silenced in the wake of bad press. Recanting statements, MSI's explanations & sudden talk of admiring Lucid seems more like corporate strong-arming coupled with a quick injection of ambiguity to relax the public upheaval. If they support Hydra that's great, that's what we want after all, anything beyond that is simply up to R&D to correct, and with support from all parties it will be corrected and we, the consumers will win.
> 
> 4980? Where can I get one of those?
> lol... jk



Ey, it's OK with me. Think whatever you want, I was commintted to make people think of all posibilities in the search of truth, but not anymore. If in light to evidences you prefer to continue believing something that was originated by this "*We heard through the grapevine] at IDF* that Nvidia was not happy about Lucid, and was going to break Lucid's Hydra chip at the driver level to protect its SLI tax." and a story about a NF200 based MB that didn't exist, but that at the end *it did exist months before the Hydra MB* and even the person that originated the story admits to that; if you prefer to believe that story, despite the evidences, I'm not going to try to convince you nor any other one. Not anymore. I've learnt I'm not in this world to cure ignorance.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 11, 2009)

the article at overclock3d.net has been updated as follows:


Taken from Lucid's official site, ‘Lucid is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed a unique universal multi-GPU solution. The company took a fresh approach to scaling graphics rendering by engineering a real-time distributed processing engine (system-on-a-chip) that allows efficient load-balancing of multi-GPU environments using any GPU vendor.’

The jolly green giant, NVIDIA really don’t like that. With little to show their investors and even more delays to their GT300 ‘Fermi’ cards, any losses in their ‘SLI tax’ racket would really sting. Because of that they have claimed they will break support for Lucid’s chip at the driver level, and by unknown means coerced board makers Micro-Star International (MSI) into postponing their ‘Big Bang’ motherboard, which features a Lucid Hydra 200 processor taking care of the PCI-Express graphics subsystem. You can see the chip between the CPU socket and the first PCI-E slot in the picture.

[(struck through)Instead of releasing the Lucid powered board, MSI have turned Big Bang into a series, and seemingly rushed out a new ‘Big Bang Trinergy’ board, featuring, surprise surprise…NVIDIA’s NF200 chip, giving the board support for 3 way SLI, but there’s no sign of the Lucid chip or any of the unmatched multi-card goodness it promises. MSI have renamed the board with the Lucid Hydra the ‘Big Bang Fuzion’ and supposedly delayed it until early Q1 2010, which is only a couple of months away now.

 It is a shame that NVIDIA are being so anti-competitive. Removing the proprietary aspect from multi-GPU systems opens up a whole different battlefield, in a war that NVIDIA are presumably unprepared or unwilling to fight. There has been no mention of AMD/ATI in this post, mainly because they’ve not really been kicking up a stink about Lucid. ATI currently make the best single cards available in most of the consumer sectors, and they know it. They also have a much more relaxed licensing policy than NVIDIA, having licensed their CrossfireX technology to Intel right from the start, even after ATI’s acquisition by Intel’s main rivals, AMD.(end struck through)

I'm retracting this statement as I have been informed by my superiors that the Trinergy board was demoed at Cebit, here is an official statement by MSI's Garret Wu:

“The MSI P55 Big Bang with NVIDIA NF200 was already planned in December 2008, almost one year ago. MSI showcased this board on Cebit 2009 which was reported by many media like http://www.tcmagazine.com/comments.php?id=24935&catid=2 and there are also photos which show very clearly the NF200 chip:http://images.hardware.info/news/cebit-day2-23.jpg. MSI Big Bang Trinergy (NF200) is already announced and will go into mass production by the end of November.

The MSI Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) hardware is ready. Currently Lucid is optimizing the driver for Windows 7 so that it works stable and in all configurations (Including Mix & Match mode). Because MSI is dedicated to bring high quality and stable product on the market we decided to postpone the Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) pending the MSI internal qualification assurance test. The Big Bang Fuzion (Hydra 200) will be released when it’s driver is finished which is most likely Q1 2010.”

This update casts a different light on the article and hopefully MSI/NVIDIA haven't been too upset by my post. See my official apology at the bottom of the article.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out; hopefully MSI can bring out their Lucid-Based board. If it all goes to plan then we should be seeing Lucid boards appearing early next year, fingers crossed, as it sounds like the Lucid board is in testing at MSI right now.

Discuss on the Forums


Edit/Apology: It seems in my rush to get this article out nice and early for all of our readers, I made a beginners mistake (remember I've only been at this for a couple of weeks) and missed out a few important steps in the process.

I would like to officially apologize to SemiAccurate, my initial source for the article, and NVIDIA and MSI for my misinformed statements which cast them in a bad light. My sincerest apologies guys, I hope I haven't offended you - Alex Myers


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## Benetanegia (Nov 11, 2009)

theubersmurf said:


> ...



http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1625195&postcount=169

Thanks, anyway.

- Lesson #2: learn to quote and link better so that the same doesn't have to be posted 50+ posts later. 

Just for information purposes, that apology was made the same day that the article was posted at OC3D, same for the edition made in Semiaccurate. IMO this has never been news and should have never made it to the news.


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## inferKNOX (Nov 11, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> I've learnt I'm not in this world to cure ignorance.


Glad you had that epiphany


Benetanegia said:


> http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1625195&postcount=169
> 
> Thanks, anyway.
> 
> ...








I wonder if SemiAccurate feel the same way...


			
				SemiAccurate said:
			
		

> THE ANSWER to the million dollar question that's been preoccupying the geek hivemind, that is, "Will Lucid's Hydra 200 work?" has finally been answered. That's a definite Yes. PC Perspective has run the first benchmarks on the Hydra system using a narrow combination of graphics cards from both main vendors and has come up with some very interesting numbers.


source


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## DaedalusHelios (Nov 11, 2009)

SemiAccurate is not a source, its a disease.


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## theubersmurf (Nov 11, 2009)

Benetanegia said:


> http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1625195&postcount=169
> 
> Thanks, anyway.
> 
> ...


Love the causticness of the post by the by.


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## inferKNOX (Nov 11, 2009)

DaedalusHelios said:


> SemiAccurate is not a source, its a disease.


None-the-less one he keeps referring to.


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## Benetanegia (Nov 12, 2009)

inferKNOX said:


> None-the-less one he keeps referring to.



Because all this has been originated there, that's why I refer to that site . You know how to read? Then follow the link in the OP and look at the source of that article on the top...

Oh...


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## Mussels (Nov 12, 2009)

since people love linking to the wrong article...


http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=815


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## Benetanegia (Nov 12, 2009)

Mussels said:


> since people love linking to the wrong article...
> 
> 
> http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=815



Yeah apparently Demerjian doesn't even know how to make a proper link and linked to a GTX260 review instead of this one.  I noticed that when I followed infernox's link, but I managed to find the good one. It doesn't show anything that the Techreport article I linked before didn't show. When it works it works more or less well. Mix and match doesn't perform even close to SLI/Crossfire on a SLI/Crossfire board and that shows that at the time of writing those previews the technology is not ready for launch, but it does look promising.

Both articles mention that Lucid only had few games for testing and that doesn't look like a good sign though.

All in all this is just like any other new technology, it's promising, but it has a long way to go yet.


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