AMD responds to Nvidia’s Hybrid SLI

AMD took advantage of the launch of its new graphic cards to unveil Hybrid Graphics, a response to Nvidia’s Hybrid SLI or rather its PowerBoost component as this AMD technology only involves the increase of performances by enabling the chipset’s integrated core to work in combination with the graphic card.

The manufacturer already has a technology destined to reduce power consumption by deactivating the graphic card and using the integrated core when the load is minimal, although this is reserved to laptops. AMD told us that the same capability would not be available for PC desktops in the immediate future. Given that it is too much of a ‘’fix it’’ type solution at the current time, the manufacturer prefers not to spend its resources in its validation and practical implementation.

The AMD demonstration platform. You may have noticed that contrary to Nvidia’s solution, it’s the graphic card’s connection that is used.

Hybrid Graphics relies on use of an RS780 based platform, the future chipset with a DirectX 10 integrated core. It will be limited to combination with a Radeon HD 2400 or Radeon HD 3400. This is only logical as with a more powerful card the gains would be nil or performances would actually be reduced. Graphic cards are in fact limited to twice the performance of the integrated core in AFR mode (each GPU calculates every other image), which is the most common. If the graphic card has more than twice the power of the integrated graphic core (not uncommon) performances drop. This is also true for Nvidia’s PowerBoost.

Thus, these are solutions reserved for the entry level and we believe of lesser interest. Even if all performance gains are welcome on the entry level, spending a few extra Euros on a higher level graphic card seems like a better idea than opting for a multi-GPU system in this segment.