MSI got a lot of attention when it revealed plans for a motherboard sporting Lucid’s Hydra graphics bridge. Lucid Hydra enables consumers to mix multiple graphics cards, independently of models or manufacturer to improve rendering performance in games. All without the need for proprietary technology like SLI or CrossFire. MSI has launched the first boards of the Big Bang series but the Lucid model could not be found. Rumors surfaced that NVIDIA was behind the matter and that the card would be scrapped, something very reliable sources deny.
MSI will launch two boards apart of the Big Bang series where the first model called Trinergy will launch without Lucid Hydra Engine 200. This board instead hosts NVIDIA’s NF200 bridge chip, which just adds extra PCI Express lanes for Tri-SLI support with P55.
After Trinergy MSI will launch the second board, Big Bang Fuzion. This motherboard will sport a Lucid Hydra Engine 200 circuit and support pairing of unrelated graphics cards. Big Bang Fuzion is planned for launch in December 2009 and the reason the board is delayed is driver issues, our source tells us.
The rumors going around where NVIDIA is accused of strangling the support for the Lucid circuit has no basis according to the source. It is simply Lucid tuning its drivers for Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 and MSI taking the better safe the sorry option with a postponed launch.
How Lucid Hydra Engine works with CPU and graphics cards
As far as we know NVIDIA has had nothing to with MSI’s development of the motherboards, but we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions just yet. Attacking Lucid, supported by Intel, and MSI at this stage would be a very stupid move by NVIDIA, as it hardly needs anymore bad publicity.
