NVIDIA Shuns Lucid Hydra

[erocker]

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!

 

[MilkyWay]

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.

 

[erocker]

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!

 

[Solaris17]

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.

 

[MilkyWay]

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.

 

[Kantastic]

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

 

[erocker]

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.

 

[TheMailMan78]

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?

 

[inferKNOX]

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

 

[kylew]

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.

 

[kylew]

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?

 

[DaedalusHelios]

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.)

 

[Mussels]

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)

 

[erocker]

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.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

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:

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.

 

[erocker]

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.

 

[Mussels]

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

 

[inferKNOX]

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.

 

[Benetanegia]

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.

 

[DaedalusHelios]

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









Clearly Hydra was not prepared for launch yet.

Performance figures look promising when working properly though.

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.

 

[inferKNOX]

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

 

[Benetanegia]

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.

 

[theubersmurf]

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

 

[Benetanegia]

...

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.

 

[inferKNOX]

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

Glad you had that epiphany

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.

I wonder if SemiAccurate feel the same way...

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