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 Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 00:54 Post subject: New multi-GPU solution: competitor to crossfire & SLI |
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TechReport article
| Quote: | When a company called Lucid unveiled a web site promising a revolutionary new technology that could deliver near-perfect performance scaling for multiple GPUs, independent of GPU type, we were initially skeptical. Their claims sounded odd and perhaps too good to be true. But not only were they were present on the show floor at IDF, they were showing a demo of working silicon. Remarkably enough, it appears they may just be on to something big.
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Assuming the Hydra 100 does work as advertised, the big questions now are "How does it really perform?" and "Who will make use of it?" As for the first question, we got a demo of Crysis running at 1920x1200 at the highest quality levels available in DirectX 9. The test system was using a pair of GeForce 9800 GTX cards, and performance ranged between 40 and 60 FPS on the game's built-in frame rate counter. The game played very, very smoothly, and I didn't perceive any latency between mouse inputs and on-screen responses. That seemed very promising, but we'll have to get one of these things into Damage Labs for a true test of Lucid's scaling claims before we can draw any real conclusions about performance. |
More Info:
http://lucidlogix.com/technology/technologies.html
* When you scale two or more graphics cards, the HYDRA Engine helps you achieve a near-linear to above-linear increase in performance - a breakthrough for the industry.
* The HYDRA Engine is the first solution that "plays well with others." Unlike other technologies, it is completely compatible with all gaming applications, chipsets and GPUs from any vendor, so you can develop a totally customizable PC solution. Mix and match elements into your gaming system to achieve the price and performance level that's just perfect for you. And developers no longer have to write games and applications specific to a chip. Whether the API is OpenGL or Direct3D, the HYDRA Engine can tackle both.
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Sounds very promising, and with Intel backing them financially, this just might turn out to be the real deal.
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 01:34 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 01:52 Post subject: |
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wtf? How can two cards combines via Hydra give over 2x performance? :S
* ERROR * DOES NOT COMPUTE *
"YARR! We be stealin' yer games an plundrin' yer gold!" sez the pirate.
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 04:27 Post subject: |
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only way i can think of would be to agree on each rendering their own frame and displaying them with a lag of one frame, which is really just postponing the issue
i wish they moved on to raytracing already where addition would be completely linear
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 12:30 Post subject: |
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raytracing is way harder than current rendering techniques. Even a Quad SLI setup of 280's can't possibly display a complex scene with good framerates.
"YARR! We be stealin' yer games an plundrin' yer gold!" sez the pirate.
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 23:06 Post subject: |
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actually scene complexity has nothing to do with it
it's nearly as fast at rendering a single polygon as an entire city, provided that the entire scene and textures fit in memory
and intel and nvidia both have demonstrated their respective prototype technologies on the subject
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LeoNatan
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 23:13 Post subject: |
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Intel's was pushing Larrabee to be the first solution to allow real-time ray-tracing, but with MS' decision to not put ray-tracing acceleration support in DX11 (after successful lobbying by nVidia), I'm not sure what will happen now.
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Karmeck
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| Posted: Sat, 23rd Aug 2008 23:56 Post subject: |
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Veki
Posts: 381
Location: Croatia
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 08:04 Post subject: |
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Lucid Hydra 200: Vendor Agnostic Multi-GPU, Available in 30 Days
Looks impressive. ATI and nVidia are not happy with this technology. I wonder if they will try to buy it and bury it.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commisssioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 09:06 Post subject: |
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This should be interesting...
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 10:26 Post subject: |
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interesing  ,, but yeah anyone buying this right now is out of theyre mind,, wouldnt want to be lumbered with a machine/board that later on nobody bothers to support.,.
happens too often... more info and presentations are needed...
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LeoNatan
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 11:01 Post subject: |
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I wonder when the first lawsuit comes... If this thing works as they say, there is not point in buying the latest and greatest any more - just buy two of the cheaper ones (still cheaper than the highest-end model) and whoopdiedoo, you have a faster setup.
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 11:02 Post subject: |
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nVidia are a fan of locking out their software if a rival board is detected, so yeah - I see them coding furiously right now to block the Hydra from working with their products.
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 11:53 Post subject: |
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the articles and screenshots they've shown of hydra made me rise an eyebrow
how the hell are they splitting the scene like that?
the overhead of splitting it into elements and keeping it all in sync must be painful
i would understand splitting render passes like shadows and bumps etc, but they're saying it's dynamically stabilising
how is this possible without hacking deep into every specific render engine?
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 12:00 Post subject: |
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| shole wrote: | but they're saying it's dynamically stabilising
how is this possible without hacking deep into every specific render engine? |
That could be why they only had two games to show at their presentation (Bioshock and FEAR2) -- perhaps they DO need to make sure each title is compatible, which could mean software patches or, despite their denial, Hydra profiles?
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LeoNatan
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Posts: 73265
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 12:20 Post subject: |
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If it's profiles, than they can forget about it.  Had my fair share of fun with profiles from a certain other company - no thanks.
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Veki
Posts: 381
Location: Croatia
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 12:22 Post subject: |
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| iNatan wrote: | | I wonder when the first lawsuit comes... |
Who would sue them? ATI and nVidia can't. Maybe Microsoft if they messed with DirectX without their approval.
| shole wrote: | | how is this possible without hacking deep into every specific render engine? |
They don't have to hack any engine.
| Quote: | At a high level what Lucid's technology does is intercept OpenGL/DirectX commands from the CPU to the GPU and load balance them across any number of GPUs. The final buffers are read back by the Lucid chip and sent to primary GPU for display.
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Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commisssioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 14:06 Post subject: |
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well, duh.. but figuring out what parts of what data is safe to fiddle with is not as easy as that
it's a problem a bit like thread safety, where hydra would have to figure out the correct way to do things
where is it safe to parallelize a process without visual impact
i guess it might be possible to automatically do profiles for games though
a piece of software could play a prerecorded demo on one videocard and use it as reference for checking if the end result is correct through hydra and just trial-and-error it through
also, ati and nvidia have slight visual differences and methods of render.. won't this result in seams and value conversion artefacts in the scene?
i'll be first in line to buy it if they actually have it working proper and fast, but i'm just wondering how it's done
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Veki
Posts: 381
Location: Croatia
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| Posted: Fri, 25th Sep 2009 16:09 Post subject: |
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The way I understand how game engines work :
Game engine -> DirectX/OpenGL-> OS calls -> drivers -> hardware (GPU).
Don't have any info on how Hydra works, but I think this is what they have done :
Game engine -> DirectX/OpenGL-> Hydra -> OS calls -> drivers -> hardware (Lucid -> GPU).
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commisssioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
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LeoNatan
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| Posted: Thu, 12th Nov 2009 17:03 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Thu, 12th Nov 2009 17:50 Post subject: |
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i thought i read last week nvidia will disable the possiblity to use their cards on that chip through the drivers
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LeoNatan
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| Posted: Thu, 12th Nov 2009 17:56 Post subject: |
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Will be hacked in no time. 
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| Posted: Thu, 12th Nov 2009 18:03 Post subject: |
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| Stefan F wrote: | | i thought i read last week nvidia will disable the possiblity to use their cards on that chip through the drivers |
That's because nVidia are fucking scum.
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| Posted: Thu, 12th Nov 2009 18:13 Post subject: |
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JBeckman
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Werelds
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| Posted: Thu, 7th Jan 2010 12:58 Post subject: |
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MSI and Lucid are working around the clock on getting more support going, they literally tripled the list in the past month. The list on Guru3D there is way, way out of date it seems, the actual list is much longer 
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Slizza
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| Posted: Fri, 8th Jan 2010 12:58 Post subject: |
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MSI ruined a perfectly good motherboard with this chip.
Bit tech have been testing there retail board for the last couple weeks and also found no performance to be gained anywhere in any situation.
Gave it 3/10
You would be stupid to buy this and wait for drivers constantly just to get near the performance you would have with sli/xfire.
less performance + more complications.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/01/08/msi-big-bang-fusion-lucid-hydra-arrives/1
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