MSI reveals three more "Hydra" motherboards

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Posted on 24 May 2010 at 11:39

MSI has announced three new, more affordable motherboards sporting Lucid’s Hydra multi-graphics chip that will co-exist with its flagship P55 Big Bang Fuzion board at an event in Amsterdam.

The Lucid Hydra chip is a PCI-Express bridge that allows you to run multiple combinations of graphics cards, including ATI and Nvidia graphics cards in the same system, to increase performance in games.

The three boards include a P55 board, the P55A Fuzion, and two AMD 870-based boards, which haven’t been given final names yet. One of these will use the AMD SB850 south bridge, while the other will use the cheaper, more widely available SB710 south bridge.

Prices will start at €129 for the AMD 870+SB710 board, going up to €139 for the AMD 870+SB850 and €159 for the P55A Fuzion. All three boards will include support for SATA3 and USB3, while the two higher-priced boards will also include DrMOS power circuitry for better power efficiency.

In addition to this, MSI said that it has been working closely with Lucid to continually improve the drivers. The first reviews of the P55 Big Bang Fuzion criticised the Lucid drivers, but MSI says that a lot of work has been done since the P55 Big Bang Fuzion’s release and there are now monthly driver updates being released.

The boards are expected to go on sale shortly after Computex, which runs from 1 to 5 June in Taipei, Taiwan.

Author: Tim Smalley in Amsterdam

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