So I have been running off of a budget PC for a while now due to financial constraints. And the entire time I have been using my APU's built-in GPU as my graphics card. I have a Trinity based AMD A8-5600K. And the built in GPU is a AMD Radeon HD 7560D. For what it is, it packs a lot of power, and continues to amaze me with what it can do.
But now I have access to a dedicated graphics card. It's a AMD Radeon HD 8490. It's nothing special, but I feel like it could help a lot if I couple it with my APU's GPU. Which leads me to my question. Can I crossfire my APU with this card? I know that some 6000,7000 cards will work with it, but what about a 8000 card?
I think that combination might actually hurt performance.The 8490 is probably a re-badged 7470, which is, in turn, a re-badged 6450 (all are based on the Caicos core), with the only variance I can see is in clock speed; the 8490 has the highest clock speed of 850MHz. However, AMD recommends pairing the 6450 with an A4 series APU. I think you'd be better off with just using your integrated graphics by itself, but it should work, at least from a technical perspective. The best way to tell if it'll actually hurt performance is to test it yourself, and keep an eye out for micro-stuttering.