[adrianlee]

During the last week we have seen many new P55 based motherboards,
among them the new line of MSI , and today , IOPANEL.NET gives you an
exclusive look at the "Hidden" member of MSI product line - The Big Bang,
which is a P55 motherboard with Lucid Hydra chip - which should enable the
operation of NVIDIA and ATI based video cards on the same motherboard.

Who Is Lucid ?

Lucid is an israeli company, located at Kfar-Neter, which is developing the Hydra Chip, which is a Chip that should enable the use of NVIDIA and ATI
video cards on the same motherboard.the company holds some cooperation agreements with some of the biggest players in hardware industry, and the
motherboard that we preview today is one of the first products of this
cooperations.

The Lucid Hydra chip, as mentioned before should enable the use of 2
different video cards together on the same motherboard.
We have been told in the past that there will be different versions of the
chip - one will enable the usage of video cards like HD4870 along with a
HD4650 for example , another version will enable the usage of NVIDIA based
video cards together - like a GTX260 together with 9600GT for example,
and of course one version will enable a mix of video cards -ATI video card
together with a Nvidia video card on the same motherboard.
The Hydra chip is responsible for the Balance and link between the different
video cards.

The Big Bang -

MSI P55 "The Big Bang" is a P55 based motherboard, which hosts the Lucid Hydra chip that will replace the nf200 chip.
As you can see in our photos, the Hydra Chip is located between the CPU socket and the first/Upper PCI-Express Slot.
As for now we can't tell which one of the versions of the Hydra is placed on the motherboard, and how it performs ,
but a source inside one of the companies told us that the Hydra Chip is working as planned.

IOPaneL

TechPowerUp!

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[starboykb1]

interesting, I nearly forget Lucid technology. but i am still wondering how ATi or Nvidia drivers able to enable the dual card running on this motherboard.

[psolord]

Why would anyone want to CrosSLI?

The big thing about the hydra was the scaling it supposedly provides in mutli gpu setups.

P55/X58 can use SLI or Crossfire anyway. It just cannot use different cards. So what is the big news here exactly? A GTX 260 would want to get another GTX 260 to sli, not a 4870 and vice versa!

[weib]

If it happens it'll be cool though, unified architecture.

[longsiew]

good to have a 3rd party in the game=)

[kuang3]

mixing? what about the drivers?

anyway, even different series of cards from same manufacturer can benefit me, of course with reasonable performance gain.