AMD Hybrid Graphics

The AMD Hybrid Graphics technology, is a collective brand from AMD for its Radeon line of discrete and integrated GPU, promoting higher performance and productivity while saving energy consumption in GPUs. The technology previously applied to selected chipsets of the AMD 700 chipset series and AMD 800 chipset series only. The ATI Hybrid Graphics technology was announced on January 23, 2008 with Radeon HD 2400 series and Radeon HD 3400 series video cards supporting hybrid graphics functionality. Originally, ATI announced this feature would only be supported in Vista, but in August 2008 they included support in their Windows XP drivers as well. The architecture has been patented by ATI. The previous generation of Hybrid Crossfire paired 890GX or 880G (Radeon HD4290 and HD 4250 respectively) motherboards from the AMD 800 chipset series with an HD 5450, 5550, 5570 or 5670 Radeon video card from the Radeon HD 5000 series. Newer information suggests that A6-series and A8-series AMD APUs can be used in Hybrid Crossfire (Subsequently called "Dual Graphics") with HD 6570 and HD 6670 video cards. Dual-graphic-capable second-generation Trinity A-series APUs like the A8-5500 and A10-5700, with HD 75 / 76 series GPUs, and based on Socket FM2, are expected in June 2012.

The Hybrid CrossFireX is a technology allowing the IGP, or Integrated Graphics Processor, and the discrete GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit, to form a CrossFire setup to enhance the system capability to render 3D scenes, while the Hybrid CrossFire X technology is present on the 790GX and 890G chipsets, with two supplied physical PCI-E x16 slots at x8 bandwidth, can form a Hybrid CrossFire X setup with two video cards and the IGP, enhancing the 3D rendering capabilities.

Initial performance results paired with a Radeon HD 2400 video card leads to a 50% performance increase over standalone Radeon HD 2400 performance, notebook products will also be available. Three operation modes were spotted as follows:

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