ASUS ROG Crosshair IV Extreme Features Hydra

[btarunr]

Following the apparently-successful launch of the ROG Crosshair IV Formula, ASUS is preparing the second, even-higher end offering under the Republic of Gamers (ROG) series for the socket AM3 platform, the Crosshair IV Extreme. First pictured and detailed in March, the Crosshair IV Extreme turned out to be a little more than just a beefier Crosshair IV Formula with a stronger VRM and more expansion slots; it has an important addition to its feature-set which was revealed after some websites pictured the board without its chipset heatsink. The Crosshair IV Extreme makes use of the Lucid Hydra engine, with a 32-lane Hydra bridge chip that supports 3~4 graphics cards. While the AMD 890FX isn't deficient of PCI-Express lanes, the addition of Hydra gives the motherboard the unique ability to mix and match graphics cards, with special modes for pairing ATI GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, and ATI + NVIDIA GPUs. Another feature that got revealed with the heatsinks off is the CPU VRM, which makes use of no less than 11 independent phases, and a super ML capacitor that helps voltage tuning with high precision, and conditions CPU voltage better than conventional capacitors. ASUS may choose Computex as the ideal launch-vehicle for the Crosshair IV Extreme.



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[claylomax]

Mmmm

 

[Lionheart]

Thanx for posting this, like I said before, simply stunning motherboard, 5 PCI E slots and good spacing, great colour scheme as well, luvin it, I can't wait till I get my Rampage Extreme III motherboard

 

[DanishDevil]

Wow power circuitry. They sure shoved that CPU socket over a lot to make room. Can anybody else see potential conflicts with RAM and HSFs?

 

[Reefer86]

Wow power circuitry. They sure shoved that CPU socket over a lot to make room. Can anybody else see potential conflicts with RAM and HSFs?

Not with water...... and lets face it if you spending this much on a motherboard you should just grab some water action also.

 

[crow1001]

Sweet mobo, shame it's going to waste on an AMD CPU.

 

[erocker]

It seems wider, is it E-ATX? Yeah, that socket is a bit close to the memory slots.

 

[Mescalamba]

SLi on AMD? Interesting..

 

[Sasqui]

SLi on AMD? Interesting..

AMD has taken the high road on this one. Not only do they promote Xfire on other platforms, but now thier promoting SLI on thier own, PLUS this reeks of giving user ability to have a secondary NV card strictly for Physx. Conicidence - NOT.

Would NV ever do something like this? Not in the forseable future - they are way to arrogant.

AMD rocks.

 

[erocker]

You can already use SLi with AMD on the 980a AM3 chipset. From what I've seen (dumo I think) it's quite nice!

 

[wahdangun]

yeah at least now we can have SLi and crossfire in one mobo, just like X58

 

[HalfAHertz]

AMD has taken the high road on this one. Not only do they promote Xfire on other platforms, but now thier promoting SLI on thier own, PLUS this reeks of giving user ability to have a secondary NV card strictly for Physx. Conicidence - NOT.

Would NV ever do something like this? Not in the forseable future - they are way to arrogant.

AMD rocks.

N0 wA1 dUde!
First of all this is in no way an AMD product, it is entirely engineered by Asus.
Secondly the Hydra driver doesn't support physx yet. Remember you have to install the Hydra driver and then the ati and Nvidia ones as "sub-drivers". That means the Hydra driver runs as a sort of a hypervisor that virtualizes other drivers instead of running them natively and that means we won't see physx any time soon.

 

[Sasqui]

N0 wA1 dUde!
First of all this is in no way an AMD product, it is entirely engineered by Asus.
Secondly the Hydra driver doesn't support physx yet. Remember you have to install the Hydra driver and then the ati and Nvidia ones as "sub-drivers". That means the Hydra driver runs as a sort of a hypervisor that virtualizes other drivers instead of running them natively and that means we won't see physx any time soon.

Ahhh... well that's too bad. Suspect it'll never natively support Physx, unless Hyrda is bought by NV and forced to not support ATI.

Edit: This says a sort of different tale, it's only ASUS implementing Hydra:

http://www.techpowerup.com/107704/NVIDIA_Shuns_Lucid_Hydra.html

" 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. "

 

[Kitkat]

id buy the board for all the other features it has first before any of this, cause it has allot most will just use it for 1 cheap card Phsyx

 

[eidairaman1]

Slot config is still not optimized for dual video cards

 

[Phxprovost]

really nice but im afraid to see the retail price

 

[Kitkat]

Slot config is still not optimized for dual video cards

they are all 16X... not just the first 2 and u can turn them on or off at the top of the board

really nice but im afraid to see the retail price

not going to be more than 289/300most (but with all the other features not listed here it sounds right) The only problem with an anouncemnt like this is itll overshadow everything else cool about the board and enter gimmik territory. For 300 most 279 least It wont be bad for the ppl there trying to target. ppl who WANT way over need. If you have a 78T like like your specs say then itll be too steep, or not your market. The lucid is just something extra most ppl with 890 boards have already chosen a camp.. but the X6 for its price could be a game changer on the cpu side. It wont be more than the Intel maximus extreme even with the lucid chip.

 

[manchesterutd81]

I just bought the Crosshair IV, havent even used it yet... guess ill upgrade as soon as it comes out.

 

[cdawall]

And people called me crazy not getting the formula this willl look nice with my other crosshair series boards as for the anti amd comment towards the top my 1090t does 4.4ghz on air stable enough to loop 3dmark vantage a few times and performs like a 920 so it clocks and performs like a i7 I can handle that

 

[btarunr]

SLi on AMD? Interesting..

You could SLI on AMD before you could Crossfire on AMD, or even SLI on Intel.

 

[eidairaman1]

What I am getting at is the fastest slots are used but those other slots right underneath get sacrificed because videocards are dual slot anymore, and Scaling beyond 2 goes downhill.

they are all 16X... not just the first 2 and u can turn them on or off at the top of the board



not going to be more than 289/300most (but with all the other features not listed here it sounds right) The only problem with an anouncemnt like this is itll overshadow everything else cool about the board and enter gimmik territory. For 300 most 279 least It wont be bad for the ppl there trying to target. ppl who WANT way over need. If you have a 78T like like your specs say then itll be too steep, or not your market. The lucid is just something extra most ppl with 890 boards have already chosen a camp.. but the X6 for its price could be a game changer on the cpu side. It wont be more than the Intel maximus extreme even with the lucid chip.

 

[WarEagleAU]

MAkes me want it even more, but honestly, it is not much better than the Crosshair IV Formula.

 

[aquariuz]

You could SLI on AMD before you could Crossfire on AMD, or even SLI on Intel.

Hi Bta, what do you mean by that though? Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out which AMD boards/chipsets will support SLI. I'm not very familiar with AMD chipsets or mobos, and lately, with AMD coming out with great and affordable products makes me wanna move to them but I'm still researching more into their compatibility with my nvidia cards

thanks,
Aqua

 

[EarlZ]

Would NV ever do something like this? Not in the forseable future - they are way to arrogant.

AMD rocks.

Surely they would not, AMD has nothing to offer on the table yet.

 

[btarunr]

Hi Bta, what do you mean by that though? Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out which AMD boards/chipsets will support SLI. I'm not very familiar with AMD chipsets or mobos, and lately, with AMD coming out with great and affordable products makes me wanna move to them but I'm still researching more into their compatibility with my nvidia cards

thanks,
Aqua

I meant that the AMD platform was the first PC platform to support NVIDIA SLI. NVIDIA's nForce SLI chipsets have been available for the AMD platform all along.