Hybrid graphics has become all the rage as of recently with pretty much all new chipset from AMD and Nvidia supporting it. However, it turns out that the two are in for a surprise, as Microsoft has gone on record stating that it won't support hybrid graphics in Windows 7.

The reason for this seems to be that Microsoft doesn't feel like hybrid graphics solutions offer a good user experience. The lack of native support for hybrid graphics isn't a big deal, as it works with both Windows XP and Windows Vista today, so it'll just be up to AMD and Nvidia to sort out driver support.

We're not sure why Microsoft is discouraging system integrators from shipping hybrid graphics systems, though, as this almost seems like a sneaky way of giving Intel's integrated graphics solutions the thumbs up in favor of AMD and Nvidia. One of the complaints is that you need to reboot to switch graphics mode, but this isn't always the case, as some notebooks don't require this anymore.

The statement about these kinds of systems being unstable also sounds like a poor excuse on Microsoft's behalf, as this would most likely have something to do with early drivers. Microsoft should know better than to complain about stability issues, considering how buggy its operating systems can be at times. Either which way, this is bad news for AMD, and Nvidia is one would've thought they were hoping for native support in Windows 7 for what they think is an excellent solution.

More details here