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.

Here the on-board video from ECS A785GM-M achieved the same performance as the on-board video from Sapphire PI-AM2RS780G (AMD 780G), with Biostar TA785GE 128M (AMD 785G with 128 MB) being 7.76% faster and ECS A790GXM-A (AMD 790GX with 128 MB) being 24.97% faster than the reviewed motherboard.

A Radeon HD 3450 with 64-bit memory interface was 10.00% faster than the on-board video from ECS A785GM-M.

Enabling Radeon HD 3450 to work together with AMD 785G under CrossFire mode increased gaming performance by 80.99%. This is fantastic, because this 80% performance boost is gained absolutely for free.