ASUS Immensity concept motherboard combines Radeon HD 5450 and Lucid Hydra

by Tarinder Sandhu on 2 June 2010, 16:30

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

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The ASUS COMPUTEX bandwagon keeps on rollin' with the rather grandiose-sounding Immensity motherboard.

Immensity is a concept Intel X58 chipset-based motherboard that's, well, rather immense from a PCB viewpoint. The board ships with a few eyebrow-raising features that are revealed as the heatsinks are removed.
   



Getting the mundane out of the way first, the ROG Immensity features six DDR3 slots, SATA 6Gb/s support, a couple of electrical x16 PCIe slots, and the usual slew of overclocking buttons and gizmos. So why the fuss on a board with limited graphics-card potential?

Immensity ships with the two chips that make up the X58 chipset - middle and right - and then two further chips around the PCIe slots. The one in the middle is a LucidLogix Hydra SoC, designed to provide vendor-agnostic support for two-card graphics setups. Rather plainly, it will provide the necessary hardware for you to run NVIDIA and ATI cards in tandem, made possible by a special driver. The Hydra chip, whilst cool, isn't altogether new.

Notice the ATI-labelled chip in the middle? It's an integrated Radeon HD 5450 GPU, complete with an HDMI output, which, ASUS says, can be used to boost the performance of any add-in card, presumably via the aforementioned Hydra chip. Let's term this SLIFire.

If that doesn't razzle dazzle your fantazmagazzle, the ROG board can be overclocked via an iPhone. Now where's that kitchen sink, because it seems to be the only thing missing.

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Posted by Biscuit - Wed 02 Jun 2010 17:12
Tarinder
If that doesn't razzle dazzle your fantazmagazzle

Nice :lol:
Posted by sammorris - Thu 03 Jun 2010 02:22
Would be an amazing product, if Lucid Hydra actually worked… :mad:
Posted by -VK- - Thu 03 Jun 2010 11:06
An interesting assumption you make about the Lucid Hydra - Have you tested it?

If you're taking your assumptions from reviews of previous boards with Lucid on you're going to be in for a shock….Lucid have co-worked with ASUS to iron out a few issues and Lucid on the Crosshair IV Extreme (First ASUS board with Lucid) performs excellently, often seeing 1-2% faster speeds than with SLI / Crossfire
Posted by sammorris - Thu 03 Jun 2010 12:18
Now there's some marketing talk if ever I heard it - got any data? Fixing the scaling is only half the problem. Hydra also only worked with about 3-4 games when it was last tested. Whether or not this has been expanded, the fact that it's still game-specific and needs software written for every game is an inherent problem in the system, and they're going to need to work very hard programming in the required data for hundreds, or preferably thousands of game titles. I can't see it happening myself. They also need to get it working with dual GPU cards, else its benefits are very limited (especially given its absurdly high cost).
Posted by -VK- - Thu 03 Jun 2010 15:45
Actually I have some data, but NDA's prevent me from posting the details up - Rest assured, you'll see it once reviews of the Crosshair IV Extreme arrive.

Also, regarding the cost of Lucid, it's really not as much as you might think. :)

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