how to choose appropriate linux hardware - poor graphics performance

I can't believe I am asking this question here myself. Apologies if this is not the right place for this question.

I've been using linux since 1996, SuSE version 4.1...

And yet I am still not able to put together a well performing machine.

I bought a simple box a few months ago. I am a software developer. I don't need high end graphics nor RAID nor stuff like that.

My main goal is to have a fast responsive machine. I installed arch linux on it, and i3 as desktop environment - really it should be quite fast.

And yet...the machine responsiveness is very low, especially graphics lag A LOT. I know I didn't opt for a high end graphics engine - but shouldn't such a modern machine be enough for lag-free youtube and other video watching? Lag-free firefox browsing?

Maybe I just misconfigured my machine, and that's what my question is about. Some hardware info follows below.

As you can see, I have a AMD E-350 processor with 8GB-RAM - I should think this would be quite enough for a standard linux installation...

What I also did is, as the MoBo comes with a GPU/processor bundle, I thought that maybe upgrading just the graphics card may have some impact - nope. I bought a AMD HD5450 card with 1GB RAM (!!!) - and still I can't enjoy a fluent video on youtube, nor a sufficient experience web browsing...(maybe it's even better to have the original GPU than the added card I bought?). Of course I know that modern browsers are pretty demanding, but I should think such a machine should be able to handle it?

I read the posts on the arch linux forum about optimizing video, and AMD cards are not very well reviewed really...

There are infinite posts about how to choose your distro, there are hardware compatibility lists - but are there any tutorials or guides which actually help setting up a fast and responsive machine?

• Is my machine maybe badly configured?


• Does it just have a bad hardware set up? Should I maybe replace one or the other piece to cheaply get satisfactory performance?


• Am I just asking too much from my cheap hardware?

I am considering replacing the whole MoBo (I know it was cheap and I shouldn't expect too much from it, but I thought I should be able to tweak it...)

(lshw):

*-memory
          description: System memory
          physical id: 0
          size: 7967MiB
*-cpu
          product: AMD E-350 Processor
          vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
          physical id: 1
          bus info: cpu@0
          size: 800MHz
          capacity: 800MHz
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid aperfmperf pni monitor ssse3 cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch ibs skinit wdt arat hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save pausefilter vmmcall cpufreq
     *-pci:0
          description: Host bridge
          product: Family 14h Processor Root Complex
          vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 00
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 66MHz
          configuration: latency=32
        *-pci:0
             description: PCI bridge
             product: Family 14h Processor Root Port
             vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD]
             physical id: 4
             bus info: pci@0000:00:04.0
             version: 00
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:16 ioport:e000(size=4096) memory:fea00000-feafffff ioport:c0000000(size=268435456)
           *-display
                description: VGA compatible controller
                product: Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series]
                vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
                version: 00
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
                configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
                resources: irq:41 memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:fea20000-fea3ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fea00000-fea1ffff