Hoping you smarter and better informed netizens can give me some advice. I recently bought a GIGABYTE Motherboard GA-MA78GM-S2H with IGP. I am being given a spare COD4 that my father in law is getting for free with a gpu combo deal (either the new one or the one he already has...no difference.) Hoping to either pick up a radeon hd 3450 or 3470 (GDDR3) or just pop in a Radeon that isn't hybrid crossfire compatible. I want to play this game at a reasonable frame rate (~30 fps at 1024x768 or better.)

Currently, I can get a Radeon HD 3470 256MB 64-bit GDDR3 for 44 bucks before shipping and after rebate.

http://snipurl.com/2jf2d

It has hybrid crossfire support with my current IGP.

For the same amount, I can get a Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 before shipping and after rebate

http://snipurl.com/2jf34

No hybrid support. I cannot find if they will ever offer support for this chipset with 780G IGP. It has more memory, more streams, 128 bit vs 64 bit, etc. The only downside (compared to the 4370) is GDDR2 vs GDDR3 on the 3470.

My question is, will I get better performance with hybrid crossfire with the 3470 or will the standalone 3650 outperform them both? Again, I'm hoping either one of these options will enable me to play COD4 at a "playable" level. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

The 780G chipset uses ATI's HD3200 graphics chip. I'd say you're best bet would be the 3450. Anything that runs better than the 3200 will only be clocked down to match the performance level of the 3200. I know from reviews that Hybrid Crossfire with a 3450 wouldn't play Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, Supreme Commander, or Prey at very playable framerates and I'm not sure how graphically intensive COD4 is compared to those games. However, I would think that at 1024x768 you would be ok.

Did you mean my best bet is the 3650 because a IGP 3200 + 3450 performs worse than a standalone 3650?

No, I think the 3450 would be your best bet. Anything better would basically be wasted money because the Crossfire can only run at the speed of the slowest card, just like RAM does. Oh nevermind, I see what you're saying. I can't find reviews of the 3650 specifically that would compare similarly to the test machines that I saw of the 780G + 3450 hybrid but I think the hybrid 780G + 3450 would beat a stand alone 3650. Now if you got a 3850 or even a 3870, then that would definitely beat the hybrid solution as far as I know. Again, it's hard to reviews of specific situations like this. At least I haven't found any anyway.

EDIT: haha, well screw me silly and call me a monkey, I just found some info on your exact situation lol. From another forum:
http://www.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=899874

they discuss that a 3650 is twice as fast as the 780G and the hybrid 780G + 3450 wouldn't be twice as fast as the 780G alone so apparently you'd be getting better performance with anything about a 3650 compared to a hybrid solution of 780G + anything. Hope that helps lol...

Makes sense to me. I missed that forum post in my googling. I appreciate your help. Thanks alot!