HydraLogix Vs. SLI And CrossFire: MSI's P55A Fuzion Tested

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It definitely looks like an improvement, but not a perfect solution just yet. With SLI and Crossfire scaling largely outstripping in in real world benches, it's not an option for a performance minded person using an intel socket mobo. If they were scaling comparably well, on motherboards who's chipsets by default only support one or the other gpus companies multi-gpu scaling tech, It would be enough. But it's still behind too much to cull much of the enthusiast crowd from their intel chipsets, which support SLI and crossfire by default in many cases.

I wanted so badly for this tech to work well, back in the days of nvidia chipset motherboards being the only way to get access to SLI. (I get the feeling I wasn't alone in that desire either) Nowadays it's lost it's punch however. If the scaling were comparable, It wouldn't be such a terrible thing to see them on AMD mobos, so we could buy an AMD chipset mobo that had SLI support. But that never seems to be a direction taken by the manufacturers, nee' MSI.
 
I would like to see a quad setup of 4 matched. 2 and 2 matched and 4 randomly selected all non matching... not going to happen but would be a good read.


I enjoyed the article and hopefully in the future this tech gets better driver support and just keeps getting better...

(I have a box of pci-e video cards from dead customer computers I would love to shove them all together and actually see a benefit from it)
 
i'm buying one... i'll probably mixing gpus just for fun to say its in there. i want to support this technology and they have come a long way. i look forward to improvments to come, one day i hope lucid makes cf and sli obselete, and othere chipsets will rise to compete where no more bridges are needed its all build into the board 😀
 
[citation][nom]caamsa[/nom]Could someone just put SLI and Crossfire on the same board?[/citation]The P55A supports both, in addition to various Hydra modes, but does not include the bridge connector that goes across the top of the cards. The board that it was compared to also supports both, and does include SLI and CrossFire bridges. Most P55 and X58 motherboards support both technologies.[citation][nom]kettu[/nom]Cherry picking?There are other boards that support either CF or SLI. And you don't have to pay a premium for a technology that doesn't work.[/citation]That's also said in the conclusion.
 
[citation][nom]ruffopurititiwang[/nom]The 6870 scales better in cfx than that 5850. Why not test that?[/citation]

that's true, the new Radeon HD 6800 series scales really good, better than SLI, 6850 in CF can have the same performance than the radeon hd 5970 for $360, that's a premium... i hope toms write an article about that...
 
[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]Question,Why is it that Lucid chips are 'weaker' than the Multiplatform w/ bridge counterpart? I know it is new technology, but how can it be improved? Cheaper?[/citation]The bridge function is fine, but the logic function doesn't work well in some games. SLI had issues when it was new too, but CrossFire and SLI are almost universally supported by games at this point.
 
Results are all over the place for just the first two games where it makes a difference... Clearly a driver issue, especially for SLI and CrossFire since it's supposed to be better and since it's topped off by HydraLogix:

AvP - HydraLogix beats SLI at 1920x1080 4x AA
CoD:MW2 - HydraLogix beats CrossFire at any resolution


In care you're wondering, both GTX 460 in SLI and HD 5850 in CF can do much more in these games, just look at the other benchmarks here on Tom's Hardware. And it's no surprise since ATI and Nvidia have been developing them for a few years now.

I think I'll probably wait for Lucid Hydra 300 series (or whatever they'll call it) for LGA 1155 next year since this technology could open up such interesting upgrade possibilities.
 
Upon further reading, I'm confused. Didn't TH use one of the many SLI/CF bridge laying around when P55A Fuzion was benchmarked ? Even if you choose to buy it, it's just a cable... Can't be that expensive. They didn't include it (along with eSATA plates) probably because they wanted to keep the cost down.
 
In all honesty having your comments regarding the bridge omission repeated on almost every page made it seem you had nothing better to say and became down right annoying. Otherwise an interesting article, I was wondering if they were making any progress.
 
[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]The P55A supports both, in addition to various Hydra modes, but does not include the bridge connector that goes across the top of the cards. The board that it was compared to also supports both, and does include SLI and CrossFire bridges. Most P55 and X58 motherboards support both technologies.
That's also said in the conclusion.[/citation]


Thanks, now how about AMD? They need to get their head in the game.
 
[citation][nom]DSpider[/nom]Upon further reading, I'm confused. Didn't TH use one of the many SLI/CF bridge laying around when P55A Fuzion was benchmarked ? Even if you choose to buy it, it's just a cable... Can't be that expensive. They didn't include it (along with eSATA plates) probably because they wanted to keep the cost down.[/citation]You're right, it can't be that expensive, for MSI, when they buy in bulk. On the other hand, people do fell a little silly paying over $5 for a less than 50c part. So the most likely reason they didn't include the bridges is that they felt buyers would always use Hydra mode and thus decided not to provide them the super-cheap hardware needed by other alternatives.[citation][nom]aftereview[/nom]In all honesty having your comments regarding the bridge omission repeated on almost every page made it seem you had nothing better to say and became down right annoying. Otherwise an interesting article, I was wondering if they were making any progress.[/citation]I take it you got the message then. These parts are extremely cheap at the wholesale level and should have never been excluded from the package.
 
We’ve even seen instructions on how to select games to best highlight the capabilities of Lucid’s technology, but that's not how we roll. We pick our benchmarks based a combination of popularity, repeatability, and intensiveness. This is the only method we know to provide truly unbiased results, and it's the only way hardware can earn our respect.

How likely is it that MSI could issue a new driver within the next month that greatly improves performance for the other three titles other than AvP and CoD:MW2, thus influencing the Performance Evaluation chart in positive way ? And by how much ?

What about by the end of the year ?

I think it's anyone's guess. Kinda like Nvidia's 3D Vision with only a handful of games at first. Then it got better. It grew and grew and continues to grow. I hope this is the case with Lucid Hydra. Because once the Hydra 300 series will be out, better drivers will be there. Guaranteed.
 
I would have liked to see how BFBC2 preformed with this tech and ATI cards. Recently with the last 5 versions of cats some people have had terrible CF scaling and have had to stick with 10.4a or 10.5a. Even with the latest 10.10 we've got people stuck with these older drivers. Since this seems to be a CF bug i'd love to see how the Hydra preforms.
 
I would have liked to see how BFBC2 preformed with this tech and ATI cards. Recently with the last 5 versions of cats some people have had terrible CF scaling and have had to stick with 10.4a or 10.5a. Even with the latest 10.10 we've got people stuck with these older drivers. Since this seems to be a CF bug i'd love to see how the Hydra preforms.
 
I don't understand why you didn't test the scenarios this is most geared towards, different gens, i.e. someone has their old 4870 and their new 5850, how do they perform together?
A very incomplete review for a tech like this.
 
[citation][nom]anacandor[/nom]So basically it's just a universal CF/SLI connecter built into the motherboard? Seems odd that it's taken this long to be developed, but great nonetheless[/citation]

It's a lot more than an SLI or Crossfire bridge built into the motherboard. As the article states, the HydraLogix chip actively divides the work load among each card in the most efficient way possible. While SLI and (I believe) CrossFire just send ALL the data to each card causing excess use of the PCIe lanes, and just general inefficiency of repeated data I/O.

This is the biggest plus to this technology...the fact that you can mix and match a wide variety of cards and have them both running at full load. I can't imagine the nightmare it was to get the drivers to this point although they obviously have more work to do. I see this one day being a totally viable alternative to having to buy your graphics cards in identical pairs which has always bothered me since the voodoo 3 days.

One other point I have to make as I have often run both ATI and Nvidia machines simultaneously is the fact you can mix the two brands of cards not only for gaming but also the additional features. I have used CUDA accelerated video encoding and transcoding and can appreciate it. I also thoroughly enjoy EyeFinity on the AMD cards as I do a good amount of multi-monitor and home theater setups. The fact that you can mix the features of each brand in a single box is quite cool. Sure I am in the minority by a good bit but who knows what features AMD and NVidia will add to future cards that we can't live without.

The biggest plus? You can still use your good old SLI or XFire bridge and run dual matching cards just like normal should compatibility with games be a problem or you suddenly find yourself able to afford 2 new shiny cards.
 
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