Amd 785g hybrid crossfire

[jsreece52]

I have "googled" about all i can lol. Just wondering what vid cards are compatible with the 4200 igp to enable hybrid crossfire?

 

[HibyPrime]

http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/charts.html

the 785g is still very new, but I'd assume it has the same compatibility as the 780g

edit:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3615&p=9&cp=4
read the first 2 lines

 

[jsreece52]

Weak :/, I had assumed something titled with hd 4200 would run with at least some 4 series cards. That's what I get for assuming though, I should've realized they'd never let you "boost" performance on their higher end cards, was kinda hoping it would be compatible with a 4850/4870. Anyways...off to buy a crossfire board. Thanks very much for the info

 

[megamanx00]

Sorry but the 4350 and 4550 have 80 stream processors while the onboard video only has 40. Thus you can only hybrid SLI with other 40 stream units like the 2400XT 3470 and 3450.

 

[Guest]

I'm starting to find this really frustrating, there's next to no information about which cards are and are not compatible with the 785G chipset to enable Hybrid CrossFire on AMD's website.

I was planning on buying an Asus M4A785TD-M EVO motherboard which has the 785G chipset and Integrated Radeon HD 4200 graphics, then pairing it with a 1GB Sapphire HD 4650 Radeon discrete card to enable Hybrid Crossfire and have both the onboard and discrete GPU's working together... the main reason I thought this would be possible was from the below sources and on these pages there are graphic diagrams which appear to be taken from AMD's website (though in reality I've no idea where they come from):

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/amd-785g-chipset,review-31647.html
Graphic Diagram: http://media.bestofmicro.com/X/2/218918/original/785G%20components.jpg

This is backed up by:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17328
Graphic Diagram: http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-785g/block.jpg

Both diagrams clearly show adding either a HD 4350, 4550 or 4650 card for faster graphics, though the reviews don't really go into it. The implication of this shows that this will enable faster graphics with one of those discrete cards assisting the IGP, but if the IGP becomes disabled when any of these cards is connected then you might as well use ANY card, either ATI or NVidia, as long as the spec is higher than that of the 785G HD4200, then of course you will have better graphics, which makes me wonder why specify just those 3??

ATI/AMD's website doesn't really talk about the 785G chipset, they only concentrate on the 780 and 790 when talking about Hybrid Crossfire:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/crossfirex_hybrid.aspx

And again when they do mention the 785G, no mention of which cards can be used to enable Hybrid Crossfire:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/chipsets/7-series-integrated/Pages/amd-785G-chipset.aspx

There is a handy Crossfire compatibility chart, but it's only aimed at Crossfire and the 780/790 chipsets, not Hybrid Crossfire indicating that AMD/ATi would much rather sell you 2 graphics cards instead of 1
http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/images/crossfirex/CF_combo_chart.jpg

There is one page on AMD's website which may very well be the holy grail I am searching for, explain absolutely everything, answer any questions that anyone could possibly have about this technology and clear up the confusion, but I've been going to it for the past month now and it always says "An unexpected error has occured":
http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/ati-hybrid-graphics/

I'm almost tempted to buy an Intel/NVidia based system out of spite for wasting so much time trying to find the right information.

 

[HibyPrime]

Read my previous post.

Did you not even read this thread before asking?

 

[EXT64]

"The good news is that certain models in the upcoming Evergreen DX11 GPU series from AMD will work in Hybrid CrossFire mode on this chipset."

Quoted from Anandtech's article above.

So in other words, nothing good now, however may be something in the future. While the idea behind this is cool, in practice it only seems to do ok. Really, I think buying a better discrete GPU and using it on its own is a better value.

 

[Guest]

It PROBABLY is just a DRIVER issue with 4xxx cards' hybrid crossfire......
may as well a BIOS level stuff too but.... expected to be coming at test/prototype but when it comes to commercial testing .....
well
you may be able to guess it.... surpressed

 

[vitaliy_05]

I'm starting to find this really frustrating, there's next to no information about which cards are and are not compatible with the 785G chipset to enable Hybrid CrossFire on AMD's website.
.........
I'm almost tempted to buy an Intel/NVidia based system out of spite for wasting so much time trying to find the right information.

I also agonized 2 days, and not included, nvidea forever !!!!! learn to do the right description then again think about ATI.

 

[Thavion Hawk]

I just got a 785G based Gigabyte board and the new Athlon II x4 620. My old BFG 7900GS 256MB OC GDD3 card should work better then the HD4200. I'm not going to game with DX10 any time soon, so upgrading can wait. That said, I'll look into upgrading once the options open up a bit.

 

[OMAC84]

I have got one of these Rad HD4200 in my computer what is the best i can crossfire it with...? im fairly new to all this so any information would be aprreciated i heard you can only cross fire it with a particular series??

I emailed ATI Radeon and they dont respond to me

 

[SadMax]

From the techreport.com article posted by the other anon. user with the long post:

"The chipset can't split its x16 link in order to feed a pair of x8 connections, though. That will force motherboard makers to get creative if they want to support CrossFire configs that extend beyond pairing an ultra-low-end Radeon with the integrated GPU. The Radeon HD 4200 can't participate in CrossFire configs with discrete graphics cards that posses substantially more horsepower."

AMD has thus far, perhaps, been intentionally misleading with the presentation of this technology. Here's an official compatibility chart that makes your hybrid options a little more clear: http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/images/crossfirex/CF_combo_chart.jpg

It's a good idea. But maybe the tech has yet to catch up to theory. I tried hybrid crossfire with 785g's integrated HD4200 and an O.C. HD3450. The results were less than impressive, to be sure.

Conclusion: either wait for tech to develop, like EXT64 said, or just go buy a better discreet card. Some of the new, small cards are still powerful enough for gaming. EAH4650/DI/512MD2/A[LP] is what I'm using now. Much better results than hybrid crossfire, although your relatively strong integrated gpu goes unused.

 

[jcd1970]

I have a hybrid board and I immediately noticed it wasn't pairing well when I played Arkham Asylum. I just figured the onboard GPU would make a good back up if the Graphics Card went out. So I turned off the onboard and just use my card. Mine is a BFG Nvidia 9500. Runs Batman great.

 

[huron]

You were trying to run hybrid crossfire with a 9500? I thought only 2xxx and low 3xxx series cards were supported in hybrid.

 

[jcd1970]

I didn't bother with the Hybrid. I treated the onboard chip as noexistant. Cards run faster w/o the Hybrid.

 

[SadMax]

Regardless, as best I can tell, the scaling for hybrid crossfire technology is so minimal as to warrant it only in cases of extremely tight spaces (like low-profile HTPCs or perhaps some gaming laptops) or very minimal gaming budgets.

Wait, is there an nvidia hybrid equivalent?

 

[huron]

There was a hybrid SLI, but I thought it got dropped.

I didn't think the reason for hybrid was specifically performance, since the high-end GPU would certainly be more powerful, but more of a compromise of power consumption and reasonable performance.

I still don't understand why it's not possible to have your motherboard user the lower power IGP for normal tasks and kick in the GPU for 3D, etc - not matter the GPU...I think that would be nice - no need to be sending a couple hundred watts of power for 2D environments, but nice to have the power when you need it.

 

[EXT64]

That was exactly what hybrid SLI did (hybrid power it was called), hwever with the release of cards like the 5800 (20W idle) the need diminished drastically, so they seem to have disappeared.

 

[huron]

I thought that sounded familiar. The 58xx series cards really are quite amazing at performance and idle power...

 

[EXT64]

Yeah, I really like it as now I can reuse those cards in a couple years (when hopefully they are obsolete for games) in low performance apps and not have a small space heater.