3DMark06 measures Shader 3.0 (i.e., DirectX 9.0c) performance. We ran this software under its default configuration. For this test we included the result achieved by a 64-bit Sapphire HD 3450 card installed in the motherboard PCI Express x16 slot while disabling the motherboard’s on-board video, so we can have an idea of the performance of a very low-end video card compared to the on-board video of the reviewed motherboard. We also enabled Hybrid Graphics, i.e., configured our Radeon HD 3450 to work in parallel with the on-board video in CrossFire mode, to see the performance gain. The results you can see below.

The addition of the on-board 128 MB made Biostar TA785GE 128M to be 7.76% faster for DirectX 9.0c gaming than ECS A785GM-M (AMD 785G), which doesn’t have this dedicated memory. Biostar TA785GE 128M was also 7.90% faster than Sapphire PI-AM2RS780G (AMD 780G). ECS A790GXM-A (AMD 790GX with 128 MB), however, was 15.97% faster.

The good news is that the on-board video from the reviewed motherboard achieved the same performance level of a Radeon HD 3450.

Enabling Radeon HD 3450 to work together with AMD 785G under CrossFire mode increased gaming performance by 73.20%. This is fantastic, because this 70%+ performance boost is gained absolutely for free.