Graphics card for a Gateway PC?

[Tarumon]

Before you start upgrading any individual components of your gateway, please remember Gateway's strategy is to package lesser parts by beefing up certain stats to make it a "value" play. They do so by adding abundant but cheap ram, and a killer to all DIY rigs, a crappy mother board. Adding gpu is the easiest way to achieve performance boost, but the throughput of a gateway system will leave much more to be desired.

Look at the motherboard, if it had enough slots, an econimical and fun way to boost performance is to buy high end last gen @ today's price, and just buy two of them. If your personality is such that once you start you will keep plowing though, then buy the most expensive current gen instead. You will still crossfire or SLI the thing later.

Solid State Drives (there is Deal of the Day 256gb Sata 3 SSD for just $165ish now), same thing here, can buy two or more or just one. You will notice a huge performance boost here.

RAM wise, more isnt necessarily better, you want the fastest, widest bandwidth and the optimum number. Gateway's slow 8gb is actually a performance drain. You only notice it's benefits if you do a lot of cutting and pasting of video for example. But for gaming, frames per second, low latency, fast throughput, etc, it's like running a high horse power bus on track.

Gateway motherboards are NOT the same as their retail counterparts, distinguishable only via a small part number difference. But that is a deal killer too. You won't be able to modify many settings via BIOS, due to Gateway essentially locking it down and providing zero customer support. OEM also will no support any BIOS updates.

So if you change PSU, GPU, ram, new 120 hertz HD monitor, SSD....your throughput will be worth less than the sum of the parts - because the CPU sits on an inefficient architecture, mated to slow ram, and motherboard simply won't allow you the same upgrades.

So if you want to start down this path, I highly highly highly recommend you start from scratch. Gateways are not meant for upgrades. They are value systems for everyday use. I havent done it in a while but I wouldnt be surprised if your motherboard doesnt support Sata 3. Building a PC in and of itself is fun. Even if at the end you play no games on it. But it can also be very frustrating and money wasting if you tried to turn a Corolla into a Porsche.