Lucid demonstrates Hydra 200 on MSI board

Recently, we reported on the coming of a new MSI P55 motherboard, branded Big Bang. The remarkable thing about this board is the presence of a Lucid switchchip, which balances the graphics card load equally over installed cards. A year ago, the company showed us the Hydra 100, the predecessor of the chip that's present on MSI's board. Compared to the last chip, the production process has shrinked from 130 nm to a more conventional 65nm. The chips functionality has also been improved since then.

The special thing about Lucid's Hydra 200 chip is that it does more than just split PCI-Express lanes. The Hydra 200 is capable of analyzing OpenGL and DirectX commands from the processor and spread them throughout the present graphics cards. The chip also makes it possible to combine two completely different GPUs, including a mix of nVidia and ATI cards. This hardware-based solution isn't dependant of SLI or Crossfire profiles, which means it should always upscale properly, even when more than two GPUs are used.

MSI P55 Big Bang moederbord with Lucid Hydra 200 switchchip

Hydra has introduced three versions of its Hydra 200 switchchip, namely from 8x to double 8x, from 16x to double 16x and from 16x to double 16x or 16+8+8 lanes. The prices of the switchchips are based on the amount of lanes; Lucid charges $2,50 per lane. This means the 24-lane entry model will cost $36, while the other two 48-lane versions are to cost $72. The chip has a 6 Watt TDP, which means it requires a small heatsink to remain stable.

The operation of the Hydra 200 chip

To get MSI's Big Bang motherboard with Lucid chip fully functional, Windows 7 needs to be installed, since it's the only operating system that'll allow both AMD and nVidia drivers to be installed next to eachother. Lucid's software runs in the back and provides the user with the option to disable or enable multi-GPU. The Lucid Hydra 200 is supports all DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 games, providing it with enough potential to be successful in the market.

Lucid will deliver its first shipment of Hydra 200 chips within thirty days, which means it won't take much longer before this promising concept can finally be put to the test.

MSI's and Lucid's test setup, using an nVidia GTX 260 and AMD HD4890 graphics card.

Tags: crossfire sli windows7 directx p55

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