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I have a HP 1000-1205TX Notebook PC which has a Intel® Core™ i3-2328M Processor and AMD Radeon HD 7450M (1 GB DDR3 dedicated) graphics card. The processor also has integrated graphics.
I am running linux and having some problems with getting the dedicated card to work well with two monitors. So before I spend time on getting that to work, I would like to know what kind of impact it would have on the performance of the laptop. I don't play any games with high graphics needs. I use mostly Firefox, Chrome browsers, and Eclipse IDE and sometimes play games like Wesnoth and Nexuiz.
So will switching to the dedicated graphics card give any performance improvements? Does a dedicated graphics card use the CPU and RAM? If this is the case, will it reduce the CPU power/RAM available for other programs?
Yes, it will improve performance. It will also let you have MORE CPU power and RAM because (unlike your onboard card) it won't share those resources with the system (it has them builtin). – krowe – 2015-10-22T04:36:38.297
@krowe Then what would be any drawback of using the dedicated card? Is it energy consumption/heat only? – Can't Tell – 2015-10-22T05:22:28.127
Higher power consumption would be the main drawback. Look at it this way, you got the on-board card free with the motherboard; you paid extra for the dedicated card after that. When's the last time you heard of the free item being the better option? – krowe – 2015-10-22T05:26:48.083
@krowe thanks for the comments. If you make it an answer I can accept it. – Can't Tell – 2015-10-22T05:31:42.107
I'm not sure why answers are being put into comments and no upvote for the question. This is an odd one. – SDsolar – 2017-04-27T04:28:44.200