I am thinking of building a budget gaming PC. I am considering pairing an AMD A10 5800K with its integrated graphics and using CrossFire with a dedicated 2 GB 6670 GPU. How would this perform? At around ￡490 GBP (approximately $700 dollars), it seems good value.

IIRC it's between 50%-90%, what it specifically is depends on what game you are playing.

Though that information may be a bit outdated, so you may want to wait for someone else to confirm / object.

Yes. I know it is game dependent, but would that overall perform well as a decent gaming rig? Could it still run, albeit not on max, modern games a solid framerate? Just enough so that they are still enjoyable....

When using CrossFire, would I be better getting the HD 6670 with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory or 2 GB of GDDR3 memory?

I played with crossfire for awhile using 2 5870's. In my opinion, not worth it.

I gave the 2nd 5870 to my friends and have not noticed any real drop in performance.

I'll stick to one good GPU vs 2 mediocre cards. More trouble than it's worth, for me.

I know having a strong GPU like a 7850 wold be better, but that's a fair bit more money. Also, the 6670 is a superior card to the 5870 (or, as far as I am aware).

Admittedly, I haven't bought any new PC games for some time, but the single 5870 just runs better over all.

I found driver issues a pain in the backside. They may have sorted that out by now but again, for me, my 5870 runs like a champ.

Your 6670 is better than my 5870. (Wish I could afford an upgrade but my wallet says "nope".)

It is just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

Well, the 6670 is a very cheap card, so I think it's worth the little extra - even if CrossFire isn't going to deliver extreme performance boosts.

Hybrid Crossfire is not recommended.

Radeon 7660D +6670 Dual (Hybrid Crossfire) = 1136 points

Radeon 6670 = 1052 points

Source: PassMark Videocard Rankings http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Also AFAIK, when using Hybrid Crossfire the integrated graphics must allocate the amount of system RAM, equal to the the amount of VRAM on the discrete. If you get a 2GB discrete card then the integrated will steal 2GB of system RAM. Budget PCs may not have a lot of system RAM to begin with. With that setup I would recommend at least 6GB of total system RAM.

The Radeon HD 6670 2GB is about 59GBP so I would wait until you have at least 150GBP for a Radeon 6850 or nvidia equivalent.

edit: Radeon 6850 is 2228 points, btw.

RAM is cheap. I am going to use 8 GB of 1866 Mhz DDR3 RAM.

It won't perform, at all. Crossfire. or SLI, requires cards that are identical, at least with the chipset, to work. Your trying to pair two different types of video cards and that won't work. The Hybrid system is a joke, even though that is supposed to work in this situation.

Now, a single 6670 (are you sure of the number, as this would be an old video card) can run Skyrim with all the bells and whistles at 1920 by 1080 with no issues. I say this because my 6970 (unlocked 6950) ran these games just fine.

Actually the 5870 is much faster than the 6670. For the most part all HD 5 series card are more powerful than their HD 6 series counterparts (by model numbers). The HD 6 series just fixed the power hog issues of the HD 5 series.

5870 is 2591 points

6670 is 1052 points

The Radeon 5870 is a bit more powerful than the 6870.

I wouldn't touch an APU + discreet GPU Crossfire configuration with a 10 foot pole, personally. I'd bet the farm it would be glitchy as all-get-out if you could get it working at all.

They can CrossFire. There's videos of numerous setups on YouTube with it. AMD's page even says the APU processors are good for dual-graphic setups.

My bad. Been out of the loop for awhile now.

I havnt heard much good out of AMD APU + AMD GPU. It will run, but not as well as you would hope. Also on 1gb GDDR5 vs 2gb GDDR3, go with the 2gb, yeah it's slightly slower but the 2gb will be more beneficial in the long run.

What would you recommend then? I cannot find anything comparably cheap, yet still capable.

Discrete Crossfire (CrossfireX) [also SLI] is a waste of money. Hybrid Crossfire is even more so, please don't waste your money.

A 7850 costs less than $200, so do the Nvidia 660's. Either card will spank any game out there at 1920 resolution, by itself.

But, even with the most basic of processors, that's still over a ￡100 more expensive.

I would not recommend spending the money on the 2GB version of that card. The GPU isn't fast enough to really make the additional video memory worthwhile. Take a look at benchmark comparisons.

Edit:

Now that I've said that I'm having a hard time finding direct comparisons. That said, there are faster GPUs that can't take advantage of 2GB of video memory. I guarantee you it's not worth the extra cash.

The 2 GB version is cheaper. The other versions are 1 GB GDDR5 instead of 2 GB GDDR3.

It's not always about memory amount.

I know it isn't, but the 2 GB version is cheaper! Why wouldn't I go with that one?

The 2GB version is cheaper because GDDR3 is cheaper than GDDR5.

GDDR5 under ideal conditions is twice as fast as GDDR3, hence the costs.