Is Intel® HD Graphics 3000 a good card?

[Jello743]

I'm going to go for a computer. There better for gaming. I found one:


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pav...lion&cp=1&lp=1

It has NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

[Ice_Storm]

Originally Posted by Jello743

I'm going to go for a computer. There better for gaming. I found one:


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pav...lion&cp=1&lp=1

It has NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

Here's what I make of this machine:

Processor Speed: 3.1 GHz with 6MB of cache (Hopefully that's for L3) - Great

Memory: 8GB (Over the recommended amount) - Great

Hard drive: 1TB at 7200 RPM (The standard) - Great

Wireless: b/g/n (N-wireless giving the most range and performance) - Great

Graphics card and slot: NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 - (This graphics cards meets the minimum requirements for most games)

Here's a list of some modern games that it'll run on:

List of games

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PCI Express x1 - This part scares me. It means you will not be able to upgrade your graphics card to a dual-slot length type graphics card that would boast greater performance, quality and frame rate.

PCI Express x1 is an old expansion slot that was meant for small graphics cards that would draw power directly from the motherboard, not the power supply.

It means you'll only be able to upgrade to weak graphics cards in the future. If you want high quality gaming, you need at least one of the following on your motherboard available:

1) One PCI Express 2.0 x16 free expansion slot
2) One PCI Express 2.1 x16 free expansion slot

These slots allow the more powerful GPU's to run in your machine. Some cards boast the power of 2 graphics cards combined into 1.

Dual-slot length graphics cards. I have one and really can play max settings on pretty much anything (besides Pirates, because it has coding problems).

Since your tower doesn't offer either slots, you might have to deal with the weak performance down the road.

Hope this helps.