On the other hand, my higher end, but certainly not highest Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon E3-1225 V2 (3.2/3.6GHz turbo) plays 1080p without a glitch using Debian Wheezy

On the other hand, my higher end, but certainly not highest Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon E3-1225 V2 (3.2/3.6GHz turbo) plays 1080p without a glitch using Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu Trusty. I'm sure I wouldn't want to play an intense 3D game with it, but for 2D purposes it's great and relatively cheap with all the integration in the chip, the Supermicro X9SAE-O it's on has a real paucity of additional chips, and one of those is for a not strictly needed 2nd gigabit Ethernet port (for a workstation board like it, most useful for running older systems software instead of depending on the southbridge's integrated controller).