MSI to release lower-cost P55 + Hydra motherboard

[zalbard]

Source: http://www.tcmagazine.com/

For later this quarter MSI is preparing two new motherboards featuring the Hydra SoC (System-on-Chip) from Lucidlogix, the 870A-GD60 Hydra seen at CeBIT and the model pictured below which is known as P55-GD88 Hydra or P55A Hydra.

Like the Big Bang Fuzion, the P55A Hydra makes use of Intel's P55 chipset but it only has Hi-c CAPs for the CPU and includes two (as opposed to three on the Fuzion) PCI-Express x16 slots, enabling 2-way SLI, 2-way X-mode (Nvidia + AMD GPU) and CrossFireX setups.

The upcoming Hydra motherboard also features APS (Active Phase Switching), DrMOS, OC Genie, four DDR3 memory slots, one eSATA, two SATA 6.0 Gbps and seven SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 channel audio, two USB 3.0 connectors, as well as Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons. No word on pricing yet but the P55A Hydra should cost under 300 Euro. Now take it away, echoes...

[Xoulz]

Need a AMD board...

[saaya]

yepp, they should focus on amd where nvidia is still blocking sli...
thats where hydra, even if its slightly slower than sli, still is a huge upgrade and great feature

[oohms]

I thought hydra was rubbish and added an extra layer of potentially dodgy drivers that we have to depend on?

[Xoulz]

I thought hydra was rubbish and added an extra layer of potentially dodgy drivers that we have to depend on?

No, the hardware has been proven and ready for some time! Just last year their drivers became dx9.1c complaint. It released on basically beta drivers and only recently (last week) did they release a revision that sped things up considerably..!

[Andrew LB]

yepp, they should focus on amd where nvidia is still blocking sli...
thats where hydra, even if its slightly slower than sli, still is a huge upgrade and great feature

nVidia isn't blocking anything and you know it. SLI isn't on AMD boards for two reasons. First, AMD wants Crossfire only on their boards. And second, AMD doesn't want to pay nVidia for rights to use SLI.

btw... is it possible to have a thread on this forum without someone making unfounded accusations regarding BOTH nVidia and ATi? In the 7 years i've been a forum member here, I've never seen such rampant BS. There is ONLY ONE reason why you don't see these technologies on competitors platforms.... They don't want to pay for the rights!!!

[STEvil]

nVidia isn't blocking anything and you know it. SLI isn't on AMD boards for two reasons. First, AMD wants Crossfire only on their boards. And second, AMD doesn't want to pay nVidia for rights to use SLI.

btw... is it possible to have a thread on this forum without someone making unfounded accusations regarding BOTH nVidia and ATi? In the 7 years i've been a forum member here, I've never seen such rampant BS. There is ONLY ONE reason why you don't see these technologies on competitors platforms.... They don't want to pay for the rights!!!

SLI works perfectly fine on AMD boards with some tweaks to the nV drivers. No mods needed to the board BIOS.

[blindbox]

nVidia isn't blocking anything and you know it. SLI isn't on AMD boards for two reasons. First, AMD wants Crossfire only on their boards. And second, AMD doesn't want to pay nVidia for rights to use SLI.

btw... is it possible to have a thread on this forum without someone making unfounded accusations regarding BOTH nVidia and ATi? In the 7 years i've been a forum member here, I've never seen such rampant BS. There is ONLY ONE reason why you don't see these technologies on competitors platforms.... They don't want to pay for the rights!!!

I don't think you need any rights for Crossfire. We have server boards running Crossfire on XS here.

As far as I know, nvidia is free to make their own AMD chipset. Always has been, and that never changed.

What STEvil said. Love the community

EDIT: Xoulz, it will be interesting if we can see benches with the new drivers.

[BulldogPO]

Tested Hydra about two months ago and my conclusion is that it is no good.
only real use would be that SLI thingy in AMD boards.

[saaya]

nVidia isn't blocking anything and you know it.

uhm, yes they are, and i know it... they dont even make it a secret, they are blocking sli on any chipset that doesnt pay them any royalty fees.
what does this have to do with amd?
intel isnt paying nvidia a single $ to get sli on x58 and p55...
the mainboard makers pay those fees directly to nvidia in case you didnt know...
intel had little if anything to do with this, intially nvidia visited mainboard partners and told them they could enable sli, for a certain fee, and they sent out sample drivers but explicity asked them all to NOT forward them to intel...
and they asked partners to not tell intel that nvidia can run sli on intels chipsets either...
that says a lot about how much this was a deal between intel and nvidia, and hence in amds case has nothing to do with amd nvidia relations, doesnt it?

in case anybody cares, it was thanks to asus that nvidia allowed sli on x58 afaik...
asus said they want sli but dont want nf200... they said they were willing to commit to a per sold board fee, and nvidia accepted it.
they basically dropped a load of cash on nvidias desk and said they want this n that... and since it made sense business wise and strategically, nvidia agreed... after that most board makers jumped on board as well...

SLI isn't on AMD boards for two reasons. First, AMD wants Crossfire only on their boards.

im sure amd wants sli support, thats a big sales point right there... without sli support x58 and p55 wouldnt have been all the successful, people would have stayed on 775 with nvidia chipsets or moved to amd with nvidia chipsets. at least until the 5xxx series launched... amd isnt blocking anything, you can run sli on amd chipsets if the driver allows it.

other than nvidia, which ACTIVELY blocks xfire on their chipsets!

please elaborate why and how you think amd is blocking sli on their chipsets...

And second, AMD doesn't want to pay nVidia for rights to use SLI.

im not sure about that... if lets say asus would drop a load of cash on nvidia to give them a custom bios for their amd chipset boards to enable sli, do you think nvidia would refuse? especially now that they cancelled their amd chipset development? i dont think so... amd doesnt really have anything to do with it...

just like you dont have to pay microsoft any money to run some software on your system... you just have to pay the one who sells you the software... and sli is nothing else but software...

sure, there is hw that you need for it, but thats already in place on a pciE 2.0 board...

btw... is it possible to have a thread on this forum without someone making unfounded accusations regarding BOTH nVidia and ATi? In the 7 years i've been a forum member here, I've never seen such rampant BS. There is ONLY ONE reason why you don't see these technologies on competitors platforms.... They don't want to pay for the rights!!!

why would amd pay for it when most of their board partners wouldnt use it? if theyd want to use it, theyd make a deal with nvidia or push amd to make a deal which would then probably cost them less per board...

id rather say the demand is either not big enough, as in not enough people are willing to spend enough money extra for having sli support on an amd board, or, nvidia doesnt want to allow sli on amd chipsets for strategic reasons... OR, the third and imo most likely reason... board partners and amd alike arent aware of how big the demand is and how much they would benefit from enabling sli...

[B-Shot]

nVidia isn't blocking anything and you know it. SLI isn't on AMD boards for two reasons. First, AMD wants Crossfire only on their boards. And second, AMD doesn't want to pay nVidia for rights to use SLI.

btw... is it possible to have a thread on this forum without someone making unfounded accusations regarding BOTH nVidia and ATi? In the 7 years i've been a forum member here, I've never seen such rampant BS. There is ONLY ONE reason why you don't see these technologies on competitors platforms.... They don't want to pay for the rights!!!

I thought nvidia was out of the high end chipset market, just the ion for lappy's

[BulldogPO]

nVidia has been blocking SLI for years on their drivers, some times new hacked drivers emerge and you can use them with any chipset like good old Intel P965 and 975X and so on....

[phantomferrari]

No, the hardware has been proven and ready for some time! Just last year their drivers became dx9.1c complaint. It released on basically beta drivers and only recently (last week) did they release a revision that sped things up considerably..!

i too read that the drivers were recently updated. does anyone know of any sites that have tested hydra with the new, updated drivers?

[[XC] gomeler]

Maybe these boards won't be priced to epic fail like the first P55 Hydra board... had no USB3/SATA6 when $200 boards supported said features. They should have priced the board around $225 to $250, not $350. Hopefully these boards will hit the $250 price point.