7 - Hybrid Graphics

Hybrid Graphics

Okay the first thing I want to show you is Hybrid Graphics. Integrated into mainboard is a stand-alone graphics core. It's more than sufficient for desktop mode and HTPC decoding, gaming wise it's not really fast though unless you lower image quality real bad and remain in the lowest resolutions. A trick with the mainboard however is that you can pair it with for example a Radeon HD 3450 and boost performance a little in the good old Crossfire way of working. In such a situation both cards will work in alternate frame rendering mode, simply put you have two (low-end) GPU's working together. Let's have a look at gaming performance that way.

Gaming: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl

Now before you start thinking, hey that's not bad. Image Quality setting are set at low here. To the left the integrated graphics ore, to the right both cores (Radeon 3450 added) working together.

Now before you go "eeuwh" completely. Mind you that this is the best performance we have ever seen on an integrated chipset And Hybrid mode seems to work okay as well.

Gaming: World in Conflict

World in Conflict is a late Cold War real-time strategy game with a strong focus on unit tactics, action, team play, and destruction. Players take on a specific role commanding air, armor, infantry, and support units to form a combined arms force against the enemy. By controlling key strategic points on the map, you sway the battle in your favor. There is no resource-gathering, so every second not spent fighting the enemy over a piece of land is a second wasted.

Once again we measure at 1024x768, we enable low quality mode. Let's be honest here .. this is a pretty hot title, in Hybrid mode we achieve plenty of FPS to be able to play the game.

Once we flick on medium quality settings things change though. You'll actually need to buy a mid-range graphics card, which is not surprising. We'll look at that in the next chapter. Whether you like the numbers or not, the 780G chipset seems to be impressive and hybrid mode works reasonable well.

One big remark here, the mainboard and graphics card need to be matched to be able to work in hybrid mode, when it comes to Hybrid Graphics video cards like the RV610 (Radeon HD 2400) and RV620 (Radeon HD 3450) will work, but RV635 and above cards will not work.

So if you want serious graphics card performance, you'll end up inserting a real graphics card none-the-less.