glxinfo -B reports this machine has hardware accelerated 3D graphics supporting a maximum GL core version of 0.0 (and compat version of 2.1) so I guess for all intensive porpoises this machine does not in fact have hardware accelerated 3D graphics anymore
I didn't check, but I'm guessing SDL picked the software rendering pipeline, because the UI was a bit sluggish. however! all of the patches I tried played just fine, so the core 2 do can handle the synth pipeline which is the important part