Graphics card for a Gateway PC?

[Tarumon]

Soleron said:

Tarumon said:
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.

Not any more, since vid cards have hardly gone down in price. You could buy a 4850 for $99 in 2009; the 7750 which is not much faster is still more than that.

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.

Crossfire and SLI improve FPS on paper only. Image quality goes down due to microstutter and there remain issues with driver support.

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.

Not in games.

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.

RAM specs hardly make a difference. Maybe 1-2% between what he has now and some super expensive low latency RAM.

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.

Why would you want to modify that stuff if you're not OCing or upgrading the CPU? It's perfectly fine as is, good CPU performance.

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.

No hard stats there. "Inefficient"? If the CPU and GPU are fast and you have enough RAM the rest of the system hardly matters. Again maybe 1-2% difference, nothing compared to spending that money on a GPU upgrade.

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.

For you, maybe. This guy wants to play games, and the easiest way for him to do that is to replace as little as possible.

computer "enthusiasts" TT. How can something so grounded in quantitative measurement be subject to so many misconceptions?

Show me your quantitative measurements for everything you tried to dispute. 

I am not encouraging him to do much with his Gateway ad it wouldnt be cost effective.  Changing GPU is the best way, and getting older GPU at a substantial discount is a great way.  The GPU clockspeed on the labels do not reveal true performance.  There are countless websites and publications dedicated to benchmarking GPU performance for different types of games.  Cheaper top of line GPU on clearance to make room for new GPU cut on new dye is very economical.  

Your opinion of whether crossfire or SLi work is based on what?  Not everyone has the budget or want to spend over $250 in this case to get a gpu.  Some time down the road, he just might wishhe bought a higher end card, without paying top dollars forone, the same GPU which he has had for a while could be mated with a now cheaper twin.  The boost is noticeable, measurable, is it as good as one gpu? No, but it's an option again with quantifiable results.

Is your knowledge coming from experience or are you just feeling superior because you read it somewhere?  How do you even know what he would want in the future?  PC gaming often leads down that forever hardware upgrade cycle.  Your dismissing my experience hardly is surprising given the "quality" of some of the posters here.  I took the time to help him.  You took a cheap shot at me, but how does that help anyone here? And you don't even have facts to support your dispute!

Write down what you do for a living and let's see how qualified you compared with pros and testers at Tom's Hardware.  And for your lack of knowledge on hardware, you can have the same gpu, cpu, ram, harddrive and STILL have vastly different results.  Gateway motherboard has a lower bandwidth. Some motherboards support Crossfire or SLi but the bus isnt wired with enough bandwidth.  And let me tell you why PC gamers (not Zynga gamers) pursue upgrades and why the small difference matters so much:

1. In FPS, if your FPS is not enough, you are gping to die without "seeing" why.

2. In MMOs, if your party spend days organizing, and hours getting to the boss at the end of an instanced dungeon, your freezing, skipped frame, or oops I didnt see here was aggro there, could wreck the experience fo everybody.

I did not make an assumption of what types of games he wishes or would eventually find fun an interesting.  What makes you even remotely qualified to say He wants to play PC games, everything is fine? Did you NOT read that he said if he liked the experience he would try to build a system NEXT? Your lack of knowledge and even worse appreciation of people's time is not a good habit to have.  I hope you are successful in real life already, cuz I'm not so sure your attitude will take you very far.