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| Lucid Virtu Interface - Simple. |
Lucid first came about roughly three years ago, announcing some pretty exciting technology to the world that would allow not only SLI or Cross Fire support for chipsets that did not officially support it, but would also allow users to pair AMD and Nvidia graphics cards together in a sort of ad-hock solution with impressive scaling.
So what happened, and why weren't we using this technology in computers years ago? The first set back for Lucid was the fact that it took almost two years to perfect and bring Virtu to market. The second set back is that Intel's chipsets over the past few years have widely supported both Cross Fire and SLI. This removed the primary niche for the software - to bring SLI to the Intel platform after Nvidia was legally blocked from producing chipsets for Intel after the Nehalem launch.
So what gave Lucid the big break they needed to enter the motherboard market? It wasn't actually until Sandy Bridge that we saw a real use for the technology, as Intel needed to call in the clean-up crew on some arguably poor decisions made when designing the numerous chipsets for the processors.
The problem with Sandy Bridge was that Intel did too good a job when creating Quick Sync video trans-coding. It was faster than using the CPU alone, and it was faster than a dedicated GPU. This was a problem, because Intel made the critical mistake of disabling the on-chip GPU in its SB processors when using the mainstream P67 chipset, and if you opted for the GPU-enabled H67 chipset you lost the ability to run a high-end gaming system with overclocking and multi-GPU capabilities. It was a case of picking what you considered more important, video games and overclocking, or video transcoding with an efficient new technology.
This is where Lucid made its break. Essentially, this cool new technology could send workloads to the designated hardware of your choice. Games could be sent to dedicated graphics cards, video transcoding could be sent to the processor's GPU or CPU - essentially giving complete control over the way your PC handled any computing work.
So what happened, and why weren't we using this technology in computers years ago? The first set back for Lucid was the fact that it took almost two years to perfect and bring Virtu to market. The second set back is that Intel's chipsets over the past few years have widely supported both Cross Fire and SLI. This removed the primary niche for the software - to bring SLI to the Intel platform after Nvidia was legally blocked from producing chipsets for Intel after the Nehalem launch.
So what gave Lucid the big break they needed to enter the motherboard market? It wasn't actually until Sandy Bridge that we saw a real use for the technology, as Intel needed to call in the clean-up crew on some arguably poor decisions made when designing the numerous chipsets for the processors.
The problem with Sandy Bridge was that Intel did too good a job when creating Quick Sync video trans-coding. It was faster than using the CPU alone, and it was faster than a dedicated GPU. This was a problem, because Intel made the critical mistake of disabling the on-chip GPU in its SB processors when using the mainstream P67 chipset, and if you opted for the GPU-enabled H67 chipset you lost the ability to run a high-end gaming system with overclocking and multi-GPU capabilities. It was a case of picking what you considered more important, video games and overclocking, or video transcoding with an efficient new technology.
This is where Lucid made its break. Essentially, this cool new technology could send workloads to the designated hardware of your choice. Games could be sent to dedicated graphics cards, video transcoding could be sent to the processor's GPU or CPU - essentially giving complete control over the way your PC handled any computing work.
Setting it up
Setting up Lucid Virtu is fairly straight forward, but it depends on what motherboard you have in your PC, and what deals manufacturers may or may not have done with Lucid. If you are lucky, you will have received this wonderful software package as a bundle with your motherboard.
For example, recently Asus have included Lucid Virtu in the vast majority of their Intel-based motherboard packages, while Gigabyte and MSI have also included Lucid on more than a few of their Intel models. If you want to find out if your board comes with a free copy you can check your model by, logging on to the Lucid website (lucidlogix.com) and checking the "where to buy" tab for motherboards that include the bundle. At the moment, a good rule of thumb is that if you don't have a Z68 or Z77 chipset, you won't have Virtu bundled in with your system.
If your motherboard was not bundled with the software, you can download the drivers for free from the Lucid website. If your CPU is compatible (Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge) the software will install; if you get an error message like "hardware incompatible" while installing, chances are you are trying to install the package on an older Intel platform, or on an AMD platform.
In order to get the most efficient set up, plug your monitor cable into your dedicated video card and run the Lucid Virtu software. Under the "games" tab, there should now be a whole list of 3D rendering and video conversion software that is installed on your system. These are the tasks that your CPU will perform using the Lucid Virtu technology, while all other 3D tasks not seen on the list will be assigned automatically to your dedicated GPU for processing.
If you try to install Lucid Virtu or the new MVP variant and you get an error stating "GPU configuration incorrect", be sure to enter your BIOS and make sure that your IGP is set to "enabled" and not "disabled" or "auto". The reason for this is many motherboards will likely disable the Intel IGP automatically as soon as a dedicated graphics card is detected.
Virtu MVP
MVP is the newest Lucid version, exclusive to Ivy Bridge. In this new edition you can take your system control to a whole new level, not just switching between dedicated and integrated GPU's, but also pairing them up to work together, bringing even greater performance to games and benchmark applications.
Virtu's Limitations
While this sounds like the perfect solution, there are still a few teething problems. Because of the way the Lucid software / drivers compile a list of programs for you to configure, it is not surprising to see some software or games missing from the list. This is because Lucid needs to manually add new software and games to its support list, and that is a near impossible task as new games and software are released or patched on a monthly basis. For this reason, some of the smaller games or software may not have support immediately, or may never get support at all. In a situation like this, unfortunately there is nothing you can do. Lucid Virtu will not work with this software (though this doesn't affect games too heavily, unless you wanted to use the on-board GPU).
Aside from the slight weakness in the Lucid Virtu software scanner, this technology really is a must-have for anyone owning a Sandy Bridge PC and a dedicated video card for gaming.
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