LucidLogix might be the first company to announce graphics switching technology for desktop system, but it seems like Virtu won’t be the only option. We’re hearing that a lot of the motherboard makers aren’t too keen on getting on board the Virtu train, as LucidLogix is only charging first class ticket pricing.
Sadly we don’t have a lot of details as to what AMD (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) are working on, but one upside of whatever they’ll offer will be that you’ll have access to the graphics card control panel, as that’s a given when the switching utility is coming from the graphics card maker. That said, we’d hazard a guess that Nvidia would keep its Optimus name while we’ll have to wait and see what AMD’s marketing department comes up with.
One of the major hurdles that LucidLogix is struggling to overcome with Virtu, despite a lot of help from Intel who’s busy pushing the software to the motherboard makers, is cost. We’re hearing some rather high numbers of $10 a license for smaller volumes which goes down to about $5 a license in larger volumes. No sane motherboard maker is going to spend that much in software licenses, especially not after AMD and Nvidia have already informed them that they’ll have their own versions of graphics switching technology in the next few months that’ll be free of charge.
Intel’s main reason for pushing Virtu, at least until recently was the fact that Intel would’ve owned the display interface and as such would’ve been in control of where things plug in. Alas, even LucidLogix saw the light and decided to offer a section mode for those not wanting to rely on the display connector of their motherboard and introduced two different ways of using Virtu with similar end results, minus the power savings. We’ll see how things work out in the long run and in as much as we’re sure that LucidLogix will gain some customers, it seems like the company has at least lost one major battle unless it changes its pricing structure.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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