Lucid Hydra Performance Review on the AMD Platform

Conclusion: NVIDIA SLI on the AMD Platform’s Future

Now we get to the crux of the main problem.  If a user wants NVIDIA cards and an AMD CPU, they have no other choice for multi-GPU rendering than Hydra.  Sure, older boards are still available that support native SLI, but they do not have the cutting edge features that many users want for their gaming machine.  So I went to NVIDIA and asked what they were doing for this situation.  Tom Petersen was kind enough to give me this official quote:


Essentially NVIDIA has no plans for the current generation of CPUs and chipsets supporting AMD products.  NVIDIA has gotten out of the chipset business and refocused those particular efforts on the Tegra series of products.  So do not expect NVIDIA to turn around and license SLI to AMD on their 800 series of chipsets.


That being said, if Bulldozer comes out and is as good as AMD is hoping, then NVIDIA might reconsider their position.  NVIDIA wants the best overall performance for their cards, and if Bulldozer is at least competitive with the Intel i7 series of chips, then we might see NVIDIA license out SLI to AMD as it has done with Intel on the last two generations of Core i7 parts.  That really is the best scenario for users overall.  Multi-GPU setups are very much in the minority of systems out there, but it is a very vocal crowd and the benchmark results they produce leave most of us in awe of what can be accomplished with the right hardware.

As for Hydra, the potential to be a solid multi-GPU platform is there.  We see the highly optimized benchmarks give great results, but unfortunately the same can’t be said for most other applications.  This might not always be true.  I remember first running SLI with two 6800 GTs, and I was not particularly impressed with the results.  Back then we saw much the same situation.  3D benchmarks were well optimized and showed the potential of the technology, and big games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 also showed great scaling.  Unfortunately, this was not the case for the majority of other games out there.  NVIDIA and AMD have persevered and continued to improve their multi-GPU technology, and now we see pretty universal scaling on most applications.  Hydra will likely follow this pattern.

Lucid is not a large company, but their influence is spreading.  With partners like Asus and MSI now actively putting the Hydra chips on quite a few boards, there will be considerably more money coming into the company.  Also, R&D resources from these companies are likely also being utilized by Lucid, and we can only hope that driver releases and more advanced gaming profiles will be provided much more frequently.  We have already seen a much steadier release of new drivers from Lucid once Asus really got on board with the technology.


We must also consider the latest product from Lucid; that of their Virtu technology to allow the integrated graphics portions of Sandy Bridge to work with a standalone video card.  Quite a few motherboard manufacturers will license out this technology from Lucid, which means more royalties coming in.  More income will mean more software developers being hired, and more support given to the industry.

The potential is there, but we just haven’t seen enough of it yet.  The idea is compelling, but the current implementations are still behind the curve when being compared to native Crossfire or SLI products.  It is a good start, but I would argue that the technology is still a bit immature.  This hopefully will change.  I cannot reiterate enough that the potential for this technology is outstanding, but delivering upon that promise is going to be a challenge.  Still, we have seen some solid improvements from the first time that Hydra was tested over a year ago, and hopefully with the extra support of motherboard partners around the industry (and Intel when it comes to Virtu), we will see some significant strides in the near future.


Further Reading

• Lucid Virtu GPU Virtualization Software Review – Sandy Bridge and Discrete coexist
• Asus Crosshair IV Extreme: More Lucid for AMD
• MSI Big Bang Fuzion Motherboard and Lucid HYDRA Performance Review
• Lucid HYDRA 200 Multi-GPU Technology Performance Preview
• Lucid HYDRA Multi-GPU Technology Launches – End of SLI and CrossFire?
• HYDRA Engine by Lucid – Multi-GPU Technology with No Strings Attached