Comment Perhaps I was too hasty there (Score 1) 263
Yes, I'm a developer as well. Let me re-phrase that, as I was going off an assumption that for all I know is no longer true, now that I look directly at it:
I have no use for graphics solutions that consume memory bandwidth that would otherwise be available to CPU core(s.)
Having said that, as memory bandwidth, as far as I was aware, remains nowhere near the bandwidth required to reach "always there when the CPU needs it", and integrated solutions always share memory with the CPU, particularly when data is being passed between CPU and GPU... it just strikes me that integrated probably -- not certainly -- remains a reliable proxy for "makes things slower."
It's also a given that the more monitors the thing is driving, the more memory bandwidth it will need. If that memory is on the same bus as the rest of the memory in the machine, again, adding monitors reduces memory bandwidth available to the CPU, and remember that the monitor has first priority -- system designs can't have the monitor going blank because the CPU wants memory. Doing both -- running graphics intensive tasks on multiple monitors... that's quite demanding. Hence, my preference for non-integrated graphics. When the graphics subsystem has its own memory, CPU performance has, at least in my experience, been considerably higher in general.
I have six monitors on one desktop setup, and two on the other. My lady has two as well. There are times for me when at least two monitors are very busy continuously and simultaneously for long periods of time (hours) at the same time that there is a heavy CPU load (where at least one core constantly at 100% and others variously hitting hard at times as well.)
Now that solid state drives are around, my machine spends a lot more time computing and a lot less waiting on disk I/O, too.
Anyone who definitively knows modern integrated chipset performance, by all means, stick an oar in.