Radeon HD 4890 in hybrid crossfire in a M3A78-T motherboard

[joanquro]

I just installed a Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Vapor-X 2 GB in a system with a M3A78-t motherboard, which has a Radeon HD 3300 Integrated Graphics. Operating system is Win XP. I can't enable hybrid crossfire, it simply doesn't show up in the Catalyst Control Panel (I have installed last CCC, 9.9). I have enabled both cards in the bios. The monitor is connected to the add-on card. Maybe this combination is not possible?. If I could enable hybrid crossfire, woult I get any noticeable boost in performance?.

Thanks.

 

[obsidian86]

hybrid crossfire is just a power saving feature where by the hd3300 will work when you not gaming or doing normal pc tasks,and the 4890 will take over when the heavier graphics power is needed

 

[joanquro]

I don't think so. Hybrid crossfire allows cooperation of one integrated graphics processor and an add-on card, so the performance can be superior (it's a crossfire of an ordinary graphics card with an IGP). The question is if a I can do this with this 4890 radeon card.

 

[EXT64]

Hybrid crossfire is only for the lower end cards (like a 3450). They do not allow it for high end cards because it would actually hurt performance since the two GPUs are so dissimilar (and the onboard in MUCH slower, so to alternate/share the load would be very difficult). Obsidian is thinking of NVidia's hybrid power which did exactly what he said above, but I believe NVidia killed that in favor or lower idle temps instead.

 

[EXT64]

Here's a nice sticky that tells you all you could want to know about SLI/Crossfire (or enough at any rate):

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-245454_15_0.html