Posted on Thursday, September 24 2009 @ 0:10 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Lucid announced it will start shipping its Hydra 200 multi-GPU hardware within the next 30 days. The technology will first appear on the MSI Big Bang P55 motherboard and promises to revolutionize the multi-GPU market because it should allow you to mix and match GPUs of different brands and performance levels. More details
at AnandTech, they had the opportunity to (briefly) play with a GeForce GTX 260 + ATI Radeon HD 4890 system.
There are three versions of the Hydra 200: the LT22114, the LT22102 and the LT22114. The only difference between the chips are the number of PCIe lanes. The lowest end chip has a x8 connection to the CPU/PCIe controller and two x8 connections to GPUs. The midrange LT22102 has a x16 connection to the CPU and two x16 connections for GPUs. And the highest end solution, the one being used on the MSI board, has a x16 to the CPU and then a configurable pair of x16s to GPUs. You can operate this controller in 4 x8 mode, 1 x16 + 2 x8 or 2 x16. It's all auto sensing and auto-configurable. The high end product will be launching in October, with the other two versions shipping into mainstream and potentially mobile systems some time later.
