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Just in case you missed our live Webcast yesterday, Editors' Office Hours talked to CNET's Rich Brown, taking questions from the audience about all things related to 3D graphics cards.

From the latest in multi-GPU setups to the cheapest video card for playing World of Warcraft, we got a lot of probing questions from the viewing audience, all answered in Rich's typically knowledgeable, in-depth style.

If you're thinking of upgrading your video card or building a new gaming rig from scratch, you should definitely check it out.

Editor's note: From now through the end of December, various Crave experts will be sharing their top five (mostly) tech-related wishes for the holiday season. See what we crave, and maybe you'll get some ideas!

Eric's video game skills are MIA. And he wants them back.

1. iRobot Roomba. Yeah sure, these things have been around for years now, but I'm not the type of person who jumps all over new technology as soon as it's available. For me, there needs to be a necessity. Case in point, my new DVR. I mean, look at my face in that pic. It's the kind of face that causes you to think, "How could someone over the age of 20 and under the age of 60 be that excited about a DVR in 2008?" And yet, there I am. It wasn't until I determined that a DVR was necessary for me to feel better about myself as a human that I got one.

Recently, my girlfriend and I got two black cats that shed. A lot. They also track tons of litter around the house. I'd prefer not to vacuum. I thought, "Do I have any young desperate relatives that I could pay 5 cents a week to come clean my house?" When that fell through, I thought, "Robots."

2. A Men's Health subscription that doesn't suck. Not exactly tech related, but it needs to be said. I love reading this magazine. Sure, they recycle a lot of the stories and workouts from previous issues, but I can always find one or two things in each issue that are useful.

If you've ever had a subscription to Men's Health, you know it does not come without strings attached. These strings assume the form of "free" books that they send you. Now, there is sometimes some new and useful information in them. That's not the problem. The problem is that they send you these at their own discretion and usually accompanied by a letter telling you how excited you should be that you have access to this free book for the next 10 days. If you're unsatisfied, send it back within the 10 days at no charge and you're done. If you keep it beyond the trial, you'll be charged.

This is a trap, plain and simple. They know most guys aren't going to bother going through the trouble of sending this thing back. They'll either keep it out of laziness (like me) or actually find a reason inside the book--probably a flimsy one--to justify keeping it. So yes, my Men's Health subscription sucks because I am lazy.

3. Video card upgrade. OK, I currently own an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS. While a year or so ago this would have been pushing the cutting edge, it's now yesterday's news, a card that drops as low as 10 frames per second at peak times in Dalaran in Wrath of the Lich King. That is unacceptable. I'm not even sure the last time I've seen anything near a steady 60 fps.

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.

Hydra allows you to harness the power of multiple graphic cards.

(Credit: LucidLogix Technologies)

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.

If you think the new generations of video cards, the Radeon HD 4800 series and the GeForce GTX 200 series, from ATI and nVIDIA, respectively, are hot (as they actually are, literally and figuratively), then just know that they can be cool, too. Liquid-cooled, that is.

ASETEK's new liquid-cooling solution for latest video cards is compact and effective.

(Credit: Asetek)

Asetek announced last Friday their first liquid cooling solution, called LCLC, for the latest video cards from the two leading GPU companies. Asetek's new liquid cooling solution is compact yet powerful enough to bring the temperature of the card down to less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit during peak performance. This allows users to run their high-end 3D games or graphics-intensive applications without being bothered by the fan noise or heating up the office, especially during summertime. This also opens up the GPU over-clocking business to a new potential.

Asetek claims that their liquid-cooling solution has gone through rigorous environmental testing assurance and can withstand shock, vibration, and thermal stress continuously during up to 50,000 hours (about 6 years) of operation with absolutely no end-user maintenance required. Furthermore, the new new cooling method is compact enough to make the card take up only one slot instead of two like other bulky alternatives, leaving end-users more slots for other hardware upgrades. This is especially significant in ATI CrossFire or nVIDIA SLI configurations, where multiple cards are used in a single machine.

Now the question is: What's your game?

(Credit: Buy.com)

The last time I wrote about a GeForce 8600 video card, it was the GT variety, and it was selling for $99.99 plus shipping. If you decided to wait, good move: Buy.com now has the even better GeForce 8600 GTS for $69.99 shipped (after a $20 mail-in rebate).

Why is the GTS better than the GT? Simple: It's faster. It has a faster core clock and faster onboard memory (256MB of it). That's important if you're into power-hungry games like BioShock and Call of Duty 4.

The PNY GeForce 8600GTS card requires a PCI Express slot, a 6-pin power connector, and a 350-watts-or-better power supply. If your system meets those requirements, this is a seriously sweet deal on a powerful video card. Look around: Most vendors sell the same card (or similar ones) for twice as much. So even if you skip the rebate (which ends March 25), you're still getting a steal.

Birthday alarms and reminders have been taken a step further with Kaltura's new Facebook app, the clunky-sounding Friends' Video Cards. It's a cool, fun way to fill an e-card with video and photo content and get mutual friends in on the deal.

I test drove Friends' Video Cards with a greeting for my friend Erin, whose birthday it just happens to be today. Creating the card is cake--the Friends' Video Cards app conveniently pulls your friends' upcoming events or lets you name your own occasion. You just add a title and invite mutual friends, if you want, to participate.

The app lets you upload a video, photo, or drawing. You can create a text slide in the app, or film a video if you've got a camera plugged in. I uploaded a fun alien "Happy Birthday" serenade and jotted down a text slide. It took me a minute to find a compatible video; Friends' Video Cards says it accepts video with FLV, MOV, and WMV extensions, though I made an M4V file type work too, on its own and by renaming the extension.

You can splash out by adding a volume-adjustable soundtrack and can use Kaltura's online editing Web app, which opens in a new tab, to split or trim a clip before sending it on its way.

Thumbs up for a breezy, interactive way to send content. The next step is to integrate a birthday notification feature with the app. The only downside to Friends' Video Cards is Kaltura's aggressive marketing. I was nagged twice to share the app with all my friends, and larger-than-average notices showed up in my minifeed each time I started and sent a new card.