If your computer has a dedicated graphics processor, you can enable GPU acceleration on AVD to make processing related to graphics, such as animation, etc., much faster. It is NOT enabled by default, and the developers page even says that it may not be compatible with each GPU, but it's worth a try. You can enable it by editing your AVD, and in the "Hardware" section, click "Create", add "GPU emulation" and set it to "Yes."
It also assumes that you have enough RAM. 4 GB is enough to run eclipse + Jellybean AVD (with WXGA720 resolution) on Ubuntu 12.04 Unity. I still have 800 MB of free memory (I don't have swap space).
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