nVidia not involved in the Lucid MSI Dispute at all

As you know we have been covering the issue between MSI, Lucid and nVidia over the Big Bang Fuzion motherboard with the Hydra 200 chip. The potentially great product was set for release in late October but for reasons [that until very recently] unknown to most of the world the Big Bang Fusion was pulled and in its place an nVidia NF200 based version called the Big Bang Trinergy was released in its place.

But that is not all, it seems someone [perhaps in an attempt to begin pointing fingers] began to spread the malicious information that nVidia had a hand in the delay. We received whispers that nVidia had contacted MSI and put "pressure" on them to delay the release of the Hydra Based Fuzion product. At the same time we received word that nVidia had said that they would block the "mix and match" function of the Hydra at the driver level. This one part seemed credible as nVidia had recently blocked the use of PhysX in mixed GPU systems in Windows 7 [which we will talk about more later]. When we received this information we attempted to contact both MSI and Lucidlogix. We did not receive a reply from either until later date.

The plot thickens at this point as MSI released a statement saying there were issues with the Lucid driver that were causing the delay and not pressure from nVidia. This still did not seem to fit the facts of the case especially when LucidLogix had previously stated that there were no issues with their drivers. Then only a few days after the announcement of the delay and the articles started to flow. Lucid pulled a rather obvious PR stunt. They invited three sites [all who had followed Lucid and Hydra rather closely] to an event where they were able to "play with" a Lucid prepared demo system to prove that Hydra was ready to go. Unfortunately this was spread around as three different systems [and not a single prepped demo unit] by more than a few news aggregation sites. We looked at it and brought to light the inconsistencies of the event which included the limited number of press [Lucid actually invited a couple additional sites only to uninvite them at the last minute], the fact that the system was a Lucid prepared demo [not a retail or press sample] and that the timing on the heels of MSI’s proclamation made it seem more of a counter than any real show ofperformance.

It seems that our article, coupled with others had an impact. The evening after our article was published we were contacted by Lucid’s PR firm Stowe Consulting and nVidia. Both wanted to talk to us about the issue and what was really going on. Today we have statements from everyone [including MSI through nVidia] and we can let you know their sides and our final analysis of the situation. The parties in this article were Kim Stowe of Stoweconsulting representing LucidLogix, Tom Petersen, Director of Technical Marketing at nVidia and Jason Lee, Director of Component Marketing, MSI Computer.