MSI Big Bang Fuzion: Pulling The Covers Off Of Lucid’s Hydra Tech

[ubergeek]

[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]Why is this on a P55 board? Imo, it would make sense to put it in to a "higher end" X58.[/citation]

I was thinking the exact same thing. What's next for these guys... I have an idea... mixing Intel and AMD processors on the same board. ;o)

 

[bounty]

The $200 saved from getting a regular board will almost get you a dual GPU 5970 instead of a 5870. Add another 50-100$ from selling your old card, and you could certainly do it.

 

[bounty]

I mean if you're already going to spend 400$ on a 5870

 

[B-Unit]

Im with noob2222 on this. Would it have killed you to use a couple supported games so we can see how its suppose to scale? Its understandable that new games wont be fully supported out the gate, but your reviewing the hardware here, show us what it can do, not what it cant.

 

[bige420]

To me this looks like an epic failure on MSI's and Lucid's side. The motherboard itself is really expensive and all your getting is a crappy lucid hydra chip that doesnt even work so well.

 

[Aerobernardo]

This is one of the worst reviews I've ever seen on Tom's. Really, you are testing Hydra on games wich are most not compatible with Lucids stuff!

Shame on you Chris! I am trully excited about what this company did. Just take a look at what this does in X mode with compatible games. The only game that would shine is Batman, where you killed the app turning Physix on when Lucid say it's not supported. Don't try to kill this tech, it might just be what we need in order to be free of SLI's licenses, vendors loyalty and other bad thing that N'vidia, Intel and AMD does.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Aerobernardo[/nom]This is one of the worst reviews I've ever seen on Tom's. Really, you are testing Hydra on games wich are most not compatible with Lucids stuff!Shame on you Chris! I am trully excited about what this company did. Just take a look at what this does in X mode with compatible games. The only game that would shine is Batman, where you killed the app turning Physix on when Lucid say it's not supported. Don't try to kill this tech, it might just be what we need in order to be free of SLI's licenses, vendors loyalty and other bad thing that N'vidia, Intel and AMD does.[/citation]

I'll respectfully have to disagree with you. Call of Duty and Batman and Vantage are supported apps. Lucid actually told me PhysX would work in mixed-vendor mode, and if you want to see the tests without PhysX, those are in a chart right above. Nobody's trying to kill anything. It's right in the conclusion that I'm rooting for MSI and Lucid. That doesn't mean everyone should throw $350 at a product that isn't ready, though.

I think some folks are forgetting that we're reviewing hardware here, not cherry-picking apps to show how great everything is. I used the games that have been added for 2010 and then went back to include Batman when I realized game compatibility wasn't as robust as I was expecting yet. We're fully prepared to follow-up as Lucid tightens up the driver, but with six days between the driver drop and today's launch, time is a limiting factor.

 

[festerovic]

Yeah I agree with memeroot, this really needs to be on an x58 chipset.

 

[-Fran-]

I got a question here... They're using a RISC processor to pump data through the PCIe BUS and making the matching for the cards, right? What if they use a better chip altogether cause they might be trailing behind with that RISC chip (wich is the right choice for the type of computing it's doing IMO). Or even use a GPU for it, lol.

I know there's one part about the software/driver part not being fully optimized just yet, but a simple look at the chipset itself is kinda laggy for the lanes and doin' some calculus.

This company needs more money to develop a better chip. Kinda reminds me PhysX.

Cheers!

 

[saint19]

The option is good, but how the article said, till MSI not develop this tecnology and do it more fast that a single 58xx don't have any sense spend $150 for use a NVIDIAGPU and ATI GPU at the same time.

 

[anamaniac]

I guess we have to wait until generation 3 to see something worthwhile.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

I applaud Lucid , If they improve on this they could go far.

 

[superpowter77]

totally agreed with Von_Matrices, I've never used Steam and don't do Online Gaming, only hardcore games as crysis, warhead, etc. I do have for example a 4890 CF setup, performing amazingly with a phenom X4 965 O.C. at 4.0Ghz with 8Gb DDR3 1333 on an ASUS Crosshair III formula. Some Friends of mine(PC gamers) are running on 4870 CF and even 4770 CF. I also have a sapphire 5870, when price become affordable then will add a second card. Just to mention it I'm not attached to any brand, just look for the best price/performance video card, I also have
the following video cards 7900GS 256,3850 256mb, 3870 512mb, gtx260 core 216 and gtx 275, was going to get a gtx 295(too expensive) I only paid $389(no tax, free shipping) for my Vision Tek 5870(on sale).

 

[superpowter77]

totally agreed with Von_Matrices, I've never used Steam and don't do Online Gaming, only hardcore games as crysis, warhead, etc. I do have for example a 4890 CF setup, performing amazingly with a phenom X4 965 O.C. at 4.0Ghz with 8Gb DDR3 1333 on an ASUS Crosshair III formula. Some Friends of mine(PC gamers) are running on 4870 CF and even 4770 CF. I also have a sapphire 5870, when price become affordable then will add a second card. Just to mention it I'm not attached to any brand, just look for the best price/performance video card, I also have
the following video cards 7900GS 256,3850 256mb, 3870 512mb, gtx260 core 216 and gtx 275, was going to get a gtx 295(too expensive) I only paid $389(no tax, free shipping) for my Vision Tek 5870(on sale).

 

[jamsbong]

The reviewer has got a point that the Mboard is already expensive and thus only attracts rich PC enthusiast. So the logical combination will be to use a ATI 58xx series cards. Otherwise, one would rather save money on a cheaper board and spend it on one good card.

Note though, the review from guru3d which tested the ATI 4xxx cards showed significant performance gains. This means the Hydra chip does work. It is just not optimised for the ATI 5xxx cards yet.

 

[knutjb]

[citation][nom]xer0[/nom]So what happens when Nvidia (which already has with Physx) or ATI decide to to make drivers (or even firmware) that looks for the competitors's (or lower-end, same-manufacturer cards) and says "Sorry we're being douchebags and turning off functionality and performance features."[/citation]
If I were to bet Nvidia would be the anal retentive company to do so given the way they have locked up their proprietary coding and Physx. I can understand Physx as a value added option, the optimized coding keeps me from buying Nvidia. I think they are cheesy dirtbags for this tactic, their money their choice. My money my choice and I will give up a few frames to not give them my money.

[citation][nom]Von_Matrices[/nom]I'm highly doubtful of the Steam hardware survey. I think it is underestimating the number of multi-GPU systems. I for one am running 4850 crossfire and steam has never detected a multi-GPU system when I was asked for the hardware survey. The 90% NVIDIA SLI seems also seems a little too high to me.[/citation]

I agree with steam not picking up my hardware accurately. I have had only one of three computers display correctly and that was an ABIT AI7 P4 2.8 with a ATI X800. My other two with an ATI X1900 and my most recent 5770 didn't show correctly. I do like Steam. It had no trouble recognizing my dads Nvida card in the machine I built for him. I have also had friends with similar Steam experiences.

Did like the article. Would have liked to see more cards but understand the premise behind your selections. Kudos to MSI and Lucid for this product. We need more of this kind of creativity.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

The win7 driver chart shows the miniport as being vendor specific and spanning all gpu units available. How's that work when you have drivers from serveral vendors? and why's the image show more than gpu0 and gpu1 if lucid doesn't support more than two anyway?

I like the idea behind the technology - if only it was on a gigabyte board instead - but I don't see the point if you're limiting yourself to two gpu units in the first place. If you buy a $350 board, you're buying a 5970 as well, and can't use your old 8800gtx or 4850 along with it anyway. There would be a point if lucid would allow the 8800gtx to act as physx card, but sadly that appears to be off limits.

In any event - can't you add some numbers from A mode with a 4870 along with a 4890 and later a 5870 to see the effects of that.
In theory the first should slightly exceed a single 5890 and beat CF mode (cf mode underclocks the 4890 to 4870 levels) and the latter should add 50% of the baseline score to the 5870 .... still in theory and at the best of times.

Out of curiousity - how big's the minimum fps difference between the different configurations? do hydra modes improve minimum rates with the load levelling, or worsen it with poor load levelling?

 

[vaskodogama]

nice tech, but I rather stick to crossfire or sli, not the hydra A,N or X Mode.

 

[chechak]

So @ last Nvidia and Ati have common friend called Hydra technology
and by time it will solve all problems and become good solution for multi-GPU system .....different vendors....

 

[Guest]

To add evidence towards the Steam problem:

I run a Radeon 4850X2 setup and Steam does not recognize it as a dual GPU setup. I checked to make sure that both GPU's were enabled before the survey. No matter what I did Steam still did not recognize the setup.

Steam's survey is flawed. Even if this only affected 4800 series card this would still have a statistically significant relationship.

 

[mrmotion]

What about running a Quadro FX and a Geforce so my gaming rig and engineering rig can be the same machine? I need support for that!

 

[eyemaster]

Just last week I jumped on the 2x5770 cards. So now I have crossfire in my system. I'm happy.

 

[Guest]

so why doesnt intel buy them off? i mean amd has ati, nvidia well is hmm nvidia, and intel needs something strong something to say hey we can run both of your video cards on our cpus and our chipsets... makes sense to me?

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]ZAWrwaer[/nom]so why doesnt intel buy them off? i mean amd has ati, nvidia well is hmm nvidia, and intel needs something strong something to say hey we can run both of your video cards on our cpus and our chipsets... makes sense to me?[/citation]

I don't think intel is interested in spending such big money on such a small marked! Intel's doing a lot other than just personal computers, and the fact that they can't compete in performance on 10% of the computers sold bothers them a lot. It costs money to invent and produce stuff after all. Why not let others bother with that and sell what they're good at instead? They've basicly already reduced the threat from competition on all their pc products by using a socket that competators can't use, indirectly pushing ali, sis and via out of their chipset marked and made sure alternatives to their igp cost too much for business computers to be equipped with them. Why bother assimilating the last competators if it's so much cheaper to just let them struggle for the remaining customers?

 

[Pershing121]

how much higher are the system reqs and video card reqs from the original stalker? I ask because I am thinking of purchasing it but currently only have an acer laptop x2 1.9 ghs amd turion with a 3200 hd video card which can only do up to dx 10 (not 10.1) and the original stalker plays just fine in dx 9 mode so would this be playable at least in dx 9 mode?