There was a time when you’d have to stick to one of the two graphics chips makers in case you wanted, some day, the Multi-GPU upgrade option. Heck you even had to stay within the same card generation, same specs as well, if you wanted that sweet sweet frame rate boost two graphics cards offered. That’s no longer the case.

The Lucid Hydra 200 chip is designed to take any supported graphics card and allow you to pair it up with the competition’s graphics cards with some interesting scaling results. HotHardware has a few test cases:

We tested the graphics cards in this article using a unique setup provided by Lucid. The main components consist of a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R motherboard powered by Intel’s Core i7 920 quad-core processor and 2GB of OCZ DDR3 RAM. Of course, this particular motherboard does not feature Lucid technology so as a result, the graphics cards were installed on a special evaluation board featuring the Hydra 200 chip. The evaluation board was connected via PCIe card installed on an x16 slot on the GA-EX58-UD3R motherboard. We were told that this test setup simulates the performance of the Hydra 200 when integrated on a mainboard.

It’s not final and hasn’t been integrated into a motherboard yet but the performance it’s pumping out is highly impressive and should be on most gamer’s want lists, and high end motherboards, in short order.

The thought of a computer using two graphics cards from very different graphics chip vendors would seem absurd, or even vaporware in the eyes of many…well it would seem we all have a bit of rethinking to do over the next few months.

AnandTech scoped out the Lucid Hydra 200 chipset which is set to allow for game acceleration by graphics cards from ATI and Nvidia, and perhaps Intel in the future, all at the same time:

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.

Interesting technology which should make for some interesting testing with mixed and matched graphics boards.

The high end of the graphics card market is filled with all manner of multi-GPU setups which pair up two beastly high-end GPUs for improved performance. Sapphire’s Radeon HD 4850X2 1GB is going to show everyone what happens when you take the exact same approach with a pair of mid-range chips. HardOCP has put the card through its paces:

Let’s clear the air about this right from the start: this is NOT a true 1GB video card. Yes, there is 1GB of GDDR3 to be found on the PCB if you add it all up, but each GPU only has access to a pool of 512MB per GPU. This is a “CrossFire-on-a-card” product, just like the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and similar to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 dual-GPU “SLI-on-a-card” product. As such, each GPU has 512MB of memory to work with, and each set of memory must contain the same data. Unfortunately, the branding may be misleading to the regular public about the amount of accessible memory on this video card as it is branded as a “Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB”, just as every AiB partner refers to Radeon HD 4870 X2 video cards as 2GB units. Sapphire does offer what they refer to as a 2GB version, which has 1GB of memory per GPU. We are going to evaluate the 512MB per GPU version of this card first.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 comes out of the box configured with AMD’s default reference clock rates for the GPU and the memory: 625 MHz on the GPU, and 1.986GHz on the memory for each GPU.

An interesting proposal in some titles but you’ll probably want to steer clear if your titles don’t scale well across multiple graphics chips.

If eeking out every last bit of performance in a game is your top priority you’ll no-doubt be looking into a multiple graphics card setup for your next gaming PC. TweakTown has pit ATI’s CrossFireX and Nvidia’s Quad SLI and Tri SLI against one another in an effort to find which solution is king of the hill. Here’s a look:

At the moment we’re really at an excellent place for gamers; I spoke about how people mention HD, Full HD and its interpretation into games with talk of Full HD gaming experiences. With Full HD considered as 1920 x 1080, these NVIDIA setups offer extremely playable FPS at even the highest of settings at 2560 x 1600.

Quad SLI and Tri-SLI setups with the cards we’ve tested today are giving you a “Beyond Full HD” experience. For people who have the money and pleasure of owning a monitor that out puts 2560 x 1600, these SLI configurations will not only make you enjoy your game experience more than ever before, but simply give you a grin from one end of your face to the other.

While on the topic of these monitors, this is only 1/3 of the puzzle; you also need a graphics card setup like you’ve seen today and a serious processor that isn’t going to limit your FPS. An i7 920 clocked around the 3.9GHz mark like we have today is perfect. If you’ve got the money, go out and buy a Quad SLI or Tri-SLI setup, because I’m going back to Far Cry 2 running 2560 x 1600 with 8x AA and loving every minute of it.

Nvidia does appear to have a slight edge but any setup involving multiple GPUs is sure to give you plenty of gaming fun.