Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has made any new systems with the motherboards that use the Hybrid crossfire technology?

I have a few design details in mind. Under 1200 including the os but no monitor. If its under 1,000 even better. Using the AMD Phenom quad core. I can take a performance hit I'm looking at the energy requirements to help lower the over all power eating requirements. Putting at least 4 gigs ram on the motherboard, a hybrid x crossfire compatible video card that can play all or most current games with some room to spare for newer stuff. Ideally the best bang for the buck and balance between being green and gaming performance.

I realize that gpus on motherboards have been terrible for gamers, but from what I'm reading about the hybrid crossfire technology that you can design a greener gamer rig with a few trade offs.

This design isn't meant for the fan boys of either Amd or Intell to argue over petty details nor which company is better for performance between ati or Nvida. Id even entertain a Intel cpu quad core design but they don't have a mother board that is hybrid crossfire capable.

Os wise It looks like i will be needing the windows vista but not sure whether I should go 64 bit or 32.

My wife wants the game machine to be a bit more greener but I want the performance and on a budget that i wont be living in the doghouse.

The ATI Hybrid CrossfireX setup only works with the 780G HD3200 IGP and the HD 34xx and HD 24xx series cards. Not exactly a card that can " play all or most current games with some room to spare for newer stuff. "
What type of monitor will you be using?

Hmm this technology is sort of confusing. I was hoping that I could buy a single decent crossfire capable card and get the added performance from the gpu on the mother board. Is this again marketing hype?

I have a older 19' monitor that can do 1600x 1200.

Just with the budget I have id like to make something that can do what is good now and yet have some power to do the things that the future may entail .


I also realize alot of the games now dont really utilize the quad cores now.


Still Id like to make a great bang for the buck system that utilizes a quad core.

Is that a CRT type monitor? They can use more than twice the wattage of LCD monitors.
It's not exactly marketing hype - it's just not geared for serious gaming.
Nvidia is doing a Hybrid Power thing more along the lines of what you're thinking. Using the IGP video chip for 2D stuff like Internet surfing and then switching over to a more powerful video card for serious gaming. Plus they can do some Hybrid SLI - but only with certain IGP motherboards and low end video cards (again) like the 8500GT and 8400GT. The "problem" with Hybrid Power is that you need a 9800GTX or higher video card and it uses AMD CPUs.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli_desktop.html

There are no real low power quad cores but the dual cores do really well even in the quad core enabled games because usually the video card becomes a limting factor before the CPU can. So to keep peace in the family and help keep the earth green:

ASUS M3N78-VM AM2+/AM2 GeForce 8200 MB $83 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131318
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz AM2 45W Dual-Core CPU $87 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103255
XFX 9800GTX (G92) $199 (after rebate) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150287
These will give you the core components of a Hybrid Power system.