Ati's Hybrid crossfire question

[laweinhander]

I have been running integrated graphics on my micro DFI board
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...068&cm_re=dfi_lanparty-_-13-136-068-_-Product

And i just recently bought the ati 3450 from newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...PA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=3450&x=0&y=0 for 15 dollars.

I figured it would be fun to mess with as it should be able to hybrid crossfire with my motherboards integrated graphics. Does anyone have any experience with this.
What kind of performance gains should i expect ?

Thx

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Apparently it's possible to get performance gains of up to 70% in some games, though I would think 30-40% would be more realistic.

 

[laweinhander]

what would one guess the level of performance I should get with the hybrid crossfire going on something like a 4650 or 3850 ?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

An ATI Hybrid CrossFireX™ system includes an ATI Radeon™ HD 2400 Series2, ATI Radeon™ HD 3400 Series or ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3400 Series graphics processor and a motherboard based on an AMD 780 integrated chipset, all operating in a Windows Vista® environment.

So 3470 is the best card you can use this with.

 

[laweinhander]

i realize that a 3470 is the best card you can use, but what level of performance should i expect once i have obtained hybrid crossfire with a 3450 what is the performance equivalent to in a single gpu solution

 

[defaultluser]

You should see %30-60 improvement, depending on the game.

Also, to get the most performance out of your onboard video chipset, you need to make sure you are using a processor with a 1.8 or 2.0 GHz Hypertransport bus (this includes all 45nm processors):

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14261/8

You can see that with proper access to memory bandwidth, the integrated graphics get damn close to the performance of a standalone 3450. It will be important to maximize the performance of your integrated graphics, since it will be the limiting factor when running the two GPUs in Crossfire.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Around about 3470 performance, depending on the game. Before now, I'd never realized there was such a difference between the 3450 and 3470. But regardless, both cards are pretty bad. The 3870 is literally 10 times better than the 3450. In fact, the only reason I could see to buy a 3450 is if you've already got an AMD chipset mobo and you can use Hybrid Crossfire. Otherwise IMO it's not worth the space.

 

[defaultluser]

what would one guess the level of performance I should get with the hybrid crossfire going on something like a 4650 or 3850 ?

MUCH lower. The 4650 or 3850 will run circles around it.

You're basically taking something that's barely capable of playing games, and increasing that by %50. It's still barely capable of playing games, but now the framerate is a little better.

 

[laweinhander]

ok
thats good to know.
i figured for only 15 dollars i might as well get it , something fun to play with too lol