Radeon 5450 in Sandbox
Sandbox (my Linux computer) has been infused with a new PCI-E video card. It takes over the video chores that were being performed by the on-the-motherboard video. It is a VisionTek PCIE 1GB VT which of actually consists of a Radeon 5450 chipset. It’s an AMD product as is the main dual core CPU in Sandbox.
The 1 GB memory on the video card card is now used rather than system memory of the on-board system.
This is not a super high performance video card nor did I intend to install one. This card is low cost and low energy. It does not need or have its own cooling fan or blower. So it is silent in operation.
What it is, is a lot faster video display than the original. The OS now reports the full 8 GIG RAM as available to the processor. Mission accomplished for about a $50 investment.
In the photo (click to enlarge) the new video card is in the center of the photo to the left of the processor with a red circuit board and large black heat sink. Plenty of room in this case for air circulation. The system is operating but the flash stopped the fan movement. You can see the four banks of 2 gig each system RAM (blue colored).
The video heat sink is warm to the touch but not what I call hot. It’s designed to be fan-less so the heat is not an issue.
My 8 year old granddaughter uses Sandbox to play MineCraft as we share computer quality time. (Never alone.) It was becoming unacceptably laggy and slow as the newer versions of MC appeared. With the new video card the video performance is back up to very acceptable. I done good!
Of course every other program on the screen has a new snap and freshness I never knew I was missing.