Crossfire using onboard video

You can't crossfire with onboard video, this is not possible.

I'm pretty sure that's not true. Question would be how do you find out crossfire compatibility, and if the onboard video is DX10, and you add a DX11 card, will that give you DX11 ability?

Here's a blurb for the ASUS M4A89GTD motherboard: "You'll also have access to the most powerful and fastest video processing around when you install a discrete ATI video card that will work in conjunction with the onboard GPU for a unique Hybrid CrossFireX configuration."

Hybrid crossfire is mainly useful in laptops. It can only be done with old and quite weak video cards. A decent discrete video card is many times more powerful than even a good IGP; crossfiring with it is not something you should be considering.

You can only run Hybrid Crossfire using very low-end GPU's. It's not a good option at all for a gaming system. Here's a thread that discusses Hybrid Crossfire:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/283685-31-hybrid-cros...

Thanks guys. I haven't built a system for 6 or 7 years. Despite having owned a computer store back then, I'm drowning in information trying to put together this computer. I should have kept up my Toms Hardware reading habit.

It can be overwhelming to keep up with everything but that's what sites like this are for. If you give us a general budget we can tell you what you should be looking at.

Here's what I ended up going with for whatever it's worth to future readers:

MB MSI 890FXA-GD70 AM3 R
(hoping for some upgradability)
$199.99

VGA SAPPHIRE|100297SR HD5830 RT
(paid way too much for this, but I think it will be a good choice to crossfire in the future, I'll by another once they drop $100 in price. Free COD MWII game!)
$248.99

CPU AMD|PH II X4 955BE 3.2G AM3
(black m series can be OC'd if desired, the 6 core doesn't seem to offer mutch as of time of this writing)
$159.99

MEM 2Gx2|GSKILL F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH
(7 latency, havn't tested speeds yet)
$114.99

PSU ABS| 900W MJ900 RT
(GOLD Certified, nice)
$149.99


These are the descriptions and prices from newegg