Since the Hydra chip works on profile, the the onboard chip will work its magic at balancing the loads to the video cards. The good thing about the Hydra chip when it comes to multi-card configuration is that it will not require any bridge, regardless of the mode used. Many popular games currently on the market do support dual card configuration. In addition, while the chip will support dual and triple cards, the list of games supported for a three-card configuration is very limited. For a list of games supported, check the official driver release on Lucidlogix’s site. Currently, Hydra 200 only support single GPU and not dual-GPU cards like the GTX 295 or the AMD HD 5970. While the board and the HydraLogix chip will support up to four cards, the manual for the Crosshair IV motherboard recommends users only install three cards. A little icon residing on the taskbar will launch the application. Hydra can be disabled in the included program. The chipset will automatically detect the modes and when the card is installed in the slot, it will automatically enable the multi-GPU by default. In addition, the Hydra chip adds support for up to three cards in SLI or mixed-mode. Be sure to read the manual to see which slots to install the cards and also what type of configurations are available. The CrossFireX is natively supported by the AMD chipset as well as the Hydra chip. The ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme board is based on the AMD 890FX chipset, and comes with the Lucid Hydra chip, which will support up to three Nvidia cards in SLI and up to four AMD cards in CrossFireX. Users who wish to update the graphic cards driver must also uninstall the HydraLogix driver first before uninstalling the graphic card driver. In order to run the multi-GPU setup, users would have to first install the graphic cards drivers, then install the HydraLogix driver. Setting up the dual cards requires a bit of extra work, but it’s not too bad. It’s something that we’ve always dreamt of. In addition to adding support for SLI, it also allows users to mix Nvidia and AMD graphics card together. The Lucid Hydra chip on the Crosshair IV allows the motherboard to run up to four graphic cards. We are revisiting the board and testing its SLI performance. ASUS added the Lucid Hydra 200 chip for SLI support. We previously reviewed at the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme based on the AMD 890FX chipset with native support for CrossFire. The ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme is the only one that combines these new features and CrossFireX and SLI support via the third party chipset. There are few motherboards on the market with the 980a chipset that support the AM3 socket, and they are already becoming outdated due to the lack of SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 support. The last motherboard for AMD platforms that supports SLI is based on the Nvidia 980a chipset. So it just makes more sense for them to have Nvidia competing for their business. We are not sure whether AMD is actively preventing Nvidia from developing chipsets for their processors, but there is no doubt that AMD wants to sell their brand of graphic cards and promote CrossFire. Despite this, Intel has worked out a deal with Nvidia where latest Intel chipsets (X58, P55, and P67) all support SLI natively (in addition to their CrossFire support).ĪMD users are not as lucky, because AMD’s 2006 buyout of ATI essentially halted any further support for SLI on AMD systems. ![]() The story changed when Intel refused to grant a license allowing Nvidia to make chipsets for Intel CPUs with integrated memory controllers. When SLI was launched, only boards with Nvidia’s own nForce chipset SLI. To run SLI, not only must the cards be of the same family, the motherboard must also support the SLI technology. Nvidia’s SLI technology gives hardcore gamers the power they need by pairing up multiple graphics cards. We tested the SLI performance of the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme board’s Lucid Hydra chip.
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