Radeon HD 5450 Vs GMA 4500?

January 21, 2015 4:09 PM

I grabbed 2 old dells an optiplex 755 and 780. I'm gonna throw windows 7 on one and xubuntu on the other. Should I just use the integrated graphics on the 780 and use the 5450 i already have to boost the performance of the 755? I think I'm gonna go with xubuntu on the 755 because I grabbed a refurbed hdd for it and it won't be as big of a pain in the ass to run windows update again in case the thing craps the bed. Also could the gma 4500 handle dual monitors? I know the 5450 can.
posted by mamamia88 to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

So, first things first - the GMA 4500 itself can handle multiple monitors, BUT the optiplex is missing the connectors required, and has no way to add them - see http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3515/t/19340101

Second, do you wish to play games in xubuntu, or just run a normal desktop? Because the GMA will be fine for the latter - the hardware video acceleration on the GMA is supported by VAAPI, however, it doens't support h264 as used by youtube. the radeon _does_, so that may too be a consideration for you.
posted by jaymzjulian at 4:28 PM on January 21, 2015

Response by poster: No I won't be playing games any games. I have a ps4 and xbox one for stuff like that.
posted by mamamia88 at 4:31 PM on January 21, 2015

So intel graphics are way better supported on linux, and amd graphics are way better supported on windows, so i'd put the radeon in the win7 box, and use the GMA in the linux box
posted by jaymzjulian at 4:33 PM on January 21, 2015

Response by poster: Sounds good to me. Anyway to get the dual monitors going though?
posted by mamamia88 at 4:42 PM on January 21, 2015

Response by poster: ooo looking at the spec sheet for the 780 some of them actually came with ubuntu back in the day. Ubuntu is going on that one for sure. And since it looks like i'll be stuck with one monitor and not 2 maybe I should go with unity?
posted by mamamia88 at 4:56 PM on January 21, 2015

You can supposedly actually buy a DVI port for it, so it turns out - this one http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dell-Optiplex-780-960-980-390-SFF-Low-Profile-Dual-DVI-Monitors-Video-Card-PCI-e-/161117136576 was $30. no idea where to find one in the wild though.
posted by jaymzjulian at 5:01 PM on January 21, 2015

Response by poster: Never saw that error message before
posted by mamamia88 at 5:52 PM on January 21, 2015

Older Radeons are pretty well supported by the open source drivers under Linux: some of them outperform the original AMD drivers IIRC.

But it doesn't really matter all that much if you're not going to be playing games.
posted by pharm at 1:50 AM on January 22, 2015