Lucid's Hydra allows for this kind of fraternizing to take place. An Nvidia and ATI card in the same system.
(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)Last year I reported on the Lucid Hydra 100. For details on what Hydra is and how it works, check that post.
This week Lucid is announcing an upgraded solution, the Hydra 200. Hydra allows two video cards to simultaneously be used in a single system.
Before clicking the Back button, yes I know Nvidia and ATI have been doing this for years with their SLI and Crossfire solutions, respectively.
The twist here is that the Lucid technology will allow you to mix and match both ATI and Nvidia cards. According to Lucid, you'll even be able to use cards from different manufacturers like EVGA and Sapphire. Lucid says that as long the cards are PCI-Express-compatible and support Direct X 9, they will work and provide an additive performance increase when paired together.
The first motherboard to implement the technology will be MSI's Big Bang in late October 2009, using Intel's P55 platform.
From there, we'll see how well it works out in the real world. With so many different configurations to test for, there are bound to be a few Lucid's testing team missed, as diligent as I'm sure they were.
Also, how much performance ncrease will you actually see? It had a demo PC running Bioshock and FEAR 2, but to be honest it was difficult to see a noticeable difference between using just one card or both.
It will be interesting to see how ATI and Nvidia respond to this as well, and can they get OEMs like Dell to adopt the technology?
The technology is exciting if it actually works in the real world and they can get enough support from manufacturers and OEMs. I guess we'll have a clearer picture in a few weeks when Big Bang drops.
The Hydra chip
(Credit: LucidLogix Technologies)Last month, LucidLogix Technologies announced Hydra, a new take on multi-GPU implementation for desktops and notebooks. Monday, I got a chance to see a live demo of the technology, and get some clarity on what exactly this thing is expected to do.
Before we get into the demo, allow me to provide some context in case the previous link did not do its job (very likely, as looking back on it, it's kinda thin; anyway...). The Hydra 100 is a Silicon on Chip (SoC) solution to scaling 3D graphics. Basically, it allows you to, for example, insert up to four graphics cards from any one vendor (ATI or Nvidia) and receive linear performance from each card. That's the promise at least.
Now you may be asking, "Doesn't this already exist?" Well kinda. Each graphics card vendor has its own solution that allows you to place multiple GPUs into one system to achieve increased performance--ATI with Crossfire and Nvidia with SLI. What separates the Lucid method is the techniques involved in achieving this.
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LucidLogix Technologies seeks to make your video card's processing more efficient. The Israel-based company claims that its new Hydra technology will direct graphic processing traffic between multiple GPUs, using several "intelligent parallelization algorithms." This is a system-on-a-chip solution that will be embedded into video cards and motherboards. LucidLogix claims this will result in the following:
1. "Cost-effective graphic performance with a near-linear to above-linear performance."
2. "Eliminate bottlenecks that exist in typical 3D graphic applications."
3. "Provide interoperability with all GPUs and chipsets."
4. "Work with the latest versions of DirectX and OpenGL."
The key things that stand out to me are the "above-linear performance" claim and the "all GPUs and chipsets" detail. The current video card in my PC is the ATI Radeon X1950. So, supposedly with Hydra I'll be able to add a Nvidia GeForce 8800 card to get better performance than the two cards are normally capable of. Whether or not the technology will actually work remains to be seen. LucidLogix claims this will improve the performance of any 3D application dynamically without developers having to write specific code. The trick here will be getting all of this to work seamlessly. I hope they can pull it off, as I'm in need of a "cheap" upgrade and I don't want to deal with any headaches. Hydra is set to be available starting in the first half of 2009.
(Credit:
Acme Portable Machines)
We'll never forget the sight of U.K. Craver Rory Reid lugging one of Dell's 20-inch laptops around the London Underground, miraculously avoiding both theft and herniated discs. But there's a new game in town, and it comes in the form of a lunchbox.
That's how Acme Portable Machines describes its LPG370TS computer, because it needs to fold up into a box if it has any hope of being carried around. The reason: It doesn't have a 20-inch LCD, but it does have a 17-inch screen--three of them, actually. Powering this Hydra-headed beast are a a 2.4GHz Intel 2 Quad chip, 2GB of memory and dual Nvidia 8800GTX cards, according to Gizmodo.
There's no pricing details, which is fine because we doubt we'd be able to lift this "lunchbox" without doing bodily harm to ourselves anyway. For that reason, we hope Acme's work fares better than its namesake employed by Wile E. Coyote.
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