I recently did a lot of googling about how to use my ATI Radeon HD 3300 integrated graphics card at the same time as my nVidia 8600 GTS discrete graphics card at the same time. The problem is, my motherboard (the BioStar TA790GX 128M) supports integrated + discrete card usage…only with ATI cards. I don’t have an ATI graphics card, and didn’t want to buy one.

This hasn’t been a problem from my two-monitor setup because the 8600GTS easily powers two monitors, but I recently ordered an upgraded monitor (24″ Dell S2409W), and I didn’t want to have to ditch my old 17″ LCD. Lots of googling, and the result is all the same: the TA790GX turns off the onboard graphics card automatically if an nVidia card is detected.

Well, my motherboard does support crossfire with 2 PCI-express slots, so I got to wondering. What if I put my graphics card not in the primary slot, but in the secondary slot? Sure, it will only run at x8 speed, but it’s already PCI-express 2.0, and the lower bandwidth is not likely to hurt my middle-of-the-road graphics card anyways.

Swap it out. Boot it up. Windows 7 recognizes TWO graphics cards from different manufacturers, automatically installs the drivers for the ATI card, and asks to reboot. Reboot.

Viola! It’s done! Hybrid graphics on an ATI motherboard with an nVidia graphics card! Hope someone finds this to be helpful.

Note: apparently, Vista will not work with this. XP may, but I’m not sure. Windows 7 definitely does. I tell you, I’m loving Windows 7!