Lucid Hydra Engine to be integrated into select graphics cards [multi-GPU]

Lucid has made a name for itself in the graphics world by creating a chip that was capable of running multiple GPUs without using SLI or Crossfire – two technologies from graphics card makers ATI and NVIDIA. Lucid’s Hydra Engine can split the rendering of a frame to two graphics processors (GPUs) regardless of their brand and relative power.

However, you had to buy a motherboard with a Lucid chip, and obviously, that’s quite a jump that many were not willing to make. That’s why Lucid has partnered with TUL powercolor to add its UNITY technology directly onto a graphics card (with an NVIDIA or ATI graphics chip). This will lower the barrier of entry for those who want to use Lucid’s Hydra Engine technology to boost their game performance and this is an obvious differentiator for graphics card maker Powercolor. We wonder how AMD/NVIDIA will react to this…

Update: as you can see on the image above, it is possible to have up to three graphics cards (including the Lucid-powered one). It is not yet clear if this works with dual-GPUs cards too. Stay tuned…