ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

[Lyden6215]

I'm pretty bummed out at the moment. I've bought ASRock boards for years now and have loved each and every one. Especially the extreme series boards. When Lucid VirtU came out, I tried it and just fell in love! However, i'm quite disappointed with the new Z87 chipset boards. How come ASRock dropped support for Lucid VirtU? I've always gotten it to work perfectly and it's been a godsend! It has always pushed my rig that extra step towards extreme graphics but keeping the cost lower. Really wishing I could return it now. The only reason why I bought it was because I NEVER thought ASRock would drop support for such an awesome product. I figured it would be included even without mentioning it in the overview of the board!

ASRock, please tell me why this was dropped. Bad move on your part.... especially since ASUS is still supporting it.

[Shiari]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

I hadn't heard of it until you posted this and I did some (more than I'd like I guess) reading into it.

From what I can tell, for desktop users as a power saving feature it's pretty pointless, modern hardware is already quite capable of putting itself to an idle state to save energy, and saving energy is not that important for desktops anyway. The other "big" gain would be enabling the use of Intel Quick Sync encoding, though my own preliminary testing doesn't show that much of a gain (though I don't do enough video encoding to really know what I'm doing) and CPU x264 encoding still appears to be faster here.

For what it's worth, you could probably regain the feature by simply getting a license of your own, they offer 30 day trials as well: Lucidlogix Product List

However, if you're running Windows 8 you may not need to. Windows 8 allows for a headless iGPU (ie no monitor attached). If you set the iGPU multi monitor support enabled in UEFI while your monitor(s) are connected to the discrete GPU you should get another video device in your device manager. I had to then get the video drivers (they weren't installed yet) and now I have two graphics cards listed there, and the Handbrake beta with QSV encoding appears to work, though I don't see any speed gains, rather a loss. (I'm not sure what other free or trial software I can try to make sure it really works).

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

I'm pretty bummed out at the moment. I've bought ASRock boards for years now and have loved each and every one. Especially the extreme series boards. When Lucid VirtU came out, I tried it and just fell in love! However, i'm quite disappointed with the new Z87 chipset boards. How come ASRock dropped support for Lucid VirtU? I've always gotten it to work perfectly and it's been a godsend! It has always pushed my rig that extra step towards extreme graphics but keeping the cost lower. Really wishing I could return it now. The only reason why I bought it was because I NEVER thought ASRock would drop support for such an awesome product. I figured it would be included even without mentioning it in the overview of the board!

ASRock, please tell me why this was dropped. Bad move on your part.... especially since ASUS is still supporting it.

Your comment is the first positive statement about Lucid Virtu that I've ever seen. Not that all the contempt for Lucid Virtu is true on that basis, but I must admit I never tried it due to all the negative comments. I should have known all the hardcore gamers would dislike it simply because it used the onboard graphics, but that is not the main reason.

The reality, or claim, was that it is very buggy. Apparently this software must be tuned (coded) for each video card, which is a huge task. There were many versions of it, and beta after beta.

The Lucid Virtu software is still available for download on most if not all of the ASRock Z77 board download pages. Also check the Beta download section, which at least for my ASR Z77 board, has several versions listed. I have no idea if those versions will work on a Z87 system, but they are there if you want to try.

I should have known all the negative comments were likely caused by simply not configuring it correctly, which seems to be the case given your comment.

[Shiari]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

Apparently it does (at least sometimes) have the ability to smooth out the framerate, but the biggest gain from that seems to be when your input framerate is higher than the display refresh rate to start with. When it's not it negatively affects framerates. And I think newer driver features such as adaptive v-sync (on nVidia, not sure if there's an AMD equivalent) offers a similar experience, but even when the framerates are not that high.

There have been claims that this Lucid Virtu software can increase framerates (with at least a Tom's Hardware review showing as much), but it seems those are false. From my understanding, Virtu MVP aborts the rendering of the frame, but the frame is still counted in the benchmark. Also, say if you're running fraps on your iGPU display, you might see 60 fps listed because that's what the iGPU should be capable of rendering, but that doesn't mean the source data from the discrete GPU is also feeding the iGPU at 60 fps.

I can't confirm that what parsec says is correct as I haven't seen any statements about particular video cards working or not working but I have read that newer drivers may cause it to not work, it doesn't work with SLI or crossfire, and it just doesn't work with all games. There are also versions of the software out there that do not allow the user to modify the list of games, making it hard to configure it properly.

In short: it seems this software is more hype than actual features ... it can't actually increase performance, but it can smooth out the performance to some extent. The idea sounds clever: to have the output of one card displayed through another. But software compatibility is lacking, and it would just be so much better if the hardware would be able to provide such a solution. I think you're better off without it, and if you can enable adaptive vsync then you're probably better off.

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

Apparently it does (at least sometimes) have the ability to smooth out the framerate, but the biggest gain from that seems to be when your input framerate is higher than the display refresh rate to start with. When it's not it negatively affects framerates. And I think newer driver features such as adaptive v-sync (on nVidia, not sure if there's an AMD equivalent) offers a similar experience, but even when the framerates are not that high.

There have been claims that this Lucid Virtu software can increase framerates (with at least a Tom's Hardware review showing as much), but it seems those are false. From my understanding, Virtu MVP aborts the rendering of the frame, but the frame is still counted in the benchmark. Also, say if you're running fraps on your iGPU display, you might see 60 fps listed because that's what the iGPU should be capable of rendering, but that doesn't mean the source data from the discrete GPU is also feeding the iGPU at 60 fps.

I can't confirm that what parsec says is correct as I haven't seen any statements about particular video cards working or not working but I have read that newer drivers may cause it to not work, it doesn't work with SLI or crossfire, and it just doesn't work with all games. There are also versions of the software out there that do not allow the user to modify the list of games, making it hard to configure it properly.

In short: it seems this software is more hype than actual features ... it can't actually increase performance, but it can smooth out the performance to some extent. The idea sounds clever: to have the output of one card displayed through another. But software compatibility is lacking, and it would just be so much better if the hardware would be able to provide such a solution. I think you're better off without it, and if you can enable adaptive vsync then you're probably better off.

Actually, that statement is not correct, you are correct about this software not being compatible with all games, I had that confused.

Also, one of the main features of Lucid Virtu is the automatic assignment of which video source, on-CPU or video card, is used to process the video content being used.

[Lyden6215]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

I had screenshots from 5 or 6 different games and benchmarks (can't find them now ) of how much of an improvement it made for my FPS. I had a GTX 680 (when it was new) at the time of my last Lucid VirtU experience. I saw about a 20% increase in performance... and that was on a 2700k! All these negative comments about Lucid VirtU just doesn't make any sense. The program downloaded and installed flawlessly. Once turned on, it improved my FPS and overall gaming experience. I'll try to find my pictures again because it was hard evidence.

I guess since Lucid has a free trial of their licensed version of it, i'll give that a shot. I'll post back with results. Thanks guys!

[Shiari]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

Sorry, but no, you can't magically gain 20% performance from some software. Simply not possible. If it was that easy everyone would have been doing this for a long time now.

What you probably saw was the effect of vsync being turned on, which basically halves the framerate when it can't render a frame on time and that affects performance quite a bit. I just ran into this explanation yesterday, didn't realise this myself either, but they explain it pretty well: HARDOCP - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync Technology Review .. I'm a happy bunny now that I've forced adaptive vsync on.

[Lyden6215]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

Sorry, but no, you can't magically gain 20% performance from some software. Simply not possible. If it was that easy everyone would have been doing this for a long time now.

What you probably saw was the effect of vsync being turned on, which basically halves the framerate when it can't render a frame on time and that affects performance quite a bit. I just ran into this explanation yesterday, didn't realise this myself either, but they explain it pretty well: HARDOCP - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync - NVIDIA Adaptive VSync Technology Review .. I'm a happy bunny now that I've forced adaptive vsync on.

Sorry, I should have been more detailed in my response. I meant 20% increase in benchmark result points. Not overall 20% FPS improvement. By the way, it isn't just the software that does it. The board has to be compatible with the software (driver?) in order for it work. So... obviously there is some hardware behind it.

[Shiari]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

Well as I wrote before, apparently this software cuts off the rendering of a frame when it detects that it won't be able to finish the rendering on time, yet the benchmark still counts it as rendering a frame. It thus artificially boosts benchmark scores while actually not providing more performance (at best a bit of an improvement in responsiveness).

[parsec]

Re: ASRock Z87 Extreme6 Lucid VirtU?

I had screenshots from 5 or 6 different games and benchmarks (can't find them now ) of how much of an improvement it made for my FPS. I had a GTX 680 (when it was new) at the time of my last Lucid VirtU experience. I saw about a 20% increase in performance... and that was on a 2700k! All these negative comments about Lucid VirtU just doesn't make any sense. The program downloaded and installed flawlessly. Once turned on, it improved my FPS and overall gaming experience. I'll try to find my pictures again because it was hard evidence.

I guess since Lucid has a free trial of their licensed version of it, i'll give that a shot. I'll post back with results. Thanks guys!

Did you try to install the versions available for the ASR Z77 boards?

Intel has an older version on their website, FWIW:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...tions&lang=eng

The following is from the Release Notes on the Intel download page:

This version is a production version and will have no time or functional limitations if motherboard has the approved Lucid BIOS production certificate installed.

If motherboard does not have Lucid BIOS certificate, or a certificate is not approved for current software package, this version will stop working in 30 days
after installation and also display the product logo of different sizes in different locations of the screen during runtime.


I doubt the new ASR boards have the "approved Lucid BIOS production certificate installed."