MSI Big Bang Fuzion Motherboard and Lucid HYDRA Performance Review

The MSI Fuzion Motherboard

The MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard combines a lot of features into a single motherboard including support for Intel’s Lynnfield and Clarkdale processors and a lot of headroom and options for overclocking. Of course the stand out feature of the board is support for Lucid’s HYDRA multi-GPU technology but can it possibly live up to the hype that has been building for years?

Introduction

LucidLogix and its HYDRA chip have a long and sordid past with PC Perspective.  We started covering the GPU scaling technology back in August of 2008 and have steadily kept track of the progress the company had made into performance improvements, compatibility improvements and even partner announcements.  We even had time to sit down with the product in November at Lucid’s office and see if the configuration was ready for the prime time. 

We finally got the first iteration of the MSI Big Bang Fuzion motherboard with integrated HYDRA controller in house and got to spend a few short hours with it.

The MSI Big Bang Fuzion Motherboard

The Big Bang Fuzion motherboard is almost identical to the previously released MSI Big Bang Trinergy motherboard in terms of layout and features with one big exception: SLI support.  The Trinergy supported not only SLI but 3-Way SLI, a feature very few P55 motherboards do.  The Fuzion however, does NOT support SLI officially at all.  Why?  That’s a good question that no one wants to answer directly but we do KNOW that it is a business decision since most other P55 motherboards already do.

Before we get to our early performance testing, let’s take a look at the motherboard itself.

The Fuzion motherboard has the same LGA1156 socket for Intel Lynnfield processors and uses the P55 chipset in conjunction with the HYDRA 200 chip.  All three of the PCIe x16 slots on the board run through the HYDRA chip and thus when software updates occur the board will actually be able to support three card scaling.  Of course, the Fuzion motherboard offers all kinds of other technologies from MSI for performance and overclocking, which we’ll be looking at in more detail when we have more time, but if you want that information now, check out our MSI Big Bang Trinergy review as well.