Lucid Enables Quick Sync Using Discrete Graphics On Sandy Bridge

This year’s CES certainly had its share of innovations and we haven’t even scratched the surface! Earlier last week, Intel officially kicked off their Sandy Bridge line of processors and with them, a new technology called Quick Sync. This hardware based transcoding engine offers twice the performance of current GPU based transcoding without degradation in quality. The downside of this is that it cannot be used if you are using a discrete GPU.

Lucid, the company most famous for their Hydra 200 chip; which provides the ability to mix NVIDIA and AMD GPUs in SLI or Crossfire, has developed a solution to the Quick Sync “oversight” that does not require any additional hardware aside from a H67 motherboard. Their software copies the frame buffer from a discrete GPU to the frame buffer of the processor’s IGP. This means users can now take advantage of Quick Sync’s superior performance and image quality without having to disconnect their discrete GPU and switch DVI connections.

A demonstration showed an H67 motherboard with a GTX 480 GPU running in conjunction with Lucid’s software. Lucid expects only a 1 to 3% drop in performance over transcoding using Quick Sync natively, but this is an easy compromise given the potential performance increase. There is currently no tentative release date for the driver, but Lucid expects to distribute this software with high end motherboards.

If you read our Sandy Bridge Review you’ll know that we were very excited about Intel’s Quick Sync hardware transcode engine. It easily offers at least twice the performance of existing GPU based transcoding solutions without sacrificing image quality. There’s just one little problem: you can’t use Quick Sync you’re using a discrete GPU, you need to use Intel’s processor graphics.