upgrade my stock ATI Radeon HD 3200

[corkss]

I have a Gateway DX4300-05 64bit vista
stock specs:
AMD Athlon X2 7750 / 2.7 GHz
640.0 GB
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Shared video memory (UMA)
I also upgraded the memory from 6gb to the max 8 gb.

I have 3 23" monitors

$200-300 price limit

Heres my situation. I have 3 montiors.. on the video card I use both outputs: vga and HDMI. The 3rd monitor I have hooked up to an adapter that plugs into an UBS port. When I'm streaming a lot of info on all 3 monitors, the computer will start bogging.

Im hoping to find a video card I can swap in place of the stock with 3 outputs instead of the stock 2. I've searched around the site and found the 300w ( i believe?) power supply is going to limit the upgrade. I'd highly like to stay with the stock power supply for ease.

This computer is strictly my trading computer. I trade stocks, so there is a lot of streaming info going and moving lines/numbers.

Thanks in advance.
Matt

 

[corkss]

Doing more browising it seems like the

EVGA 512-P3-1242-LR GeForce GT 240
or the ATI 5670

are options so far.. opinions, thoughts?
TIA

 

[dluxking]

First id like to say, you cpu also seems kind of outdated to but id worry more about your gpu first. for around $300 you could but a cheap 500 watt psu ( be carefull some can end up damaging some of your components if it gives out so read some reviews first) and a radeon 6xxx or 7xxx gpu and maybe have some money left over to put towards a new cpu. replacing the power supplie can be very easy. if you have trouble there are plenty of guides on youtube. i would highly recommend you choose this option because this would give you a significant performance increase.

for example
power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817159125
gpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161426
cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103871

total: 299.97 + S&H

 

[dluxking]

If you choose to keep your 300W power supply, your best option is the Radeon HD 7750 but you could also try a 6570 or 6670.Those are low power consumption models which draw less than 65 watts maximum- they don't require any 6-pin connector, there's no plug for it. Be sure to choose a GDDR5 model, those are faster and draw slightly less power than GDDR3 models. While the official recommendation for those cards is 400 watts, their actual power draw is much lower- various hardware review sites and testing labs have confirmed they work fine on most 300 watt power supplies.

Here are some links:

Radeon 7750: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121652
Radeon 6670: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161421
Radeon 6570: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102994

 

[corkss]

Thanks for the detailed response dluxking

 

[dluxking]

your welcome. tell me how it works out

 

[corkss]

Best answer selected by corkss.

 

[corkss]

your welcome. tell me how it works out

Well, I tried installing the hd 7750. Im not sure the driver is installing correctly or not. Should I still go into the BIOS and disable the integrated video?

Tia
Matt

 

[corkss]

Update
So instead of the BIOS route I went through the "device manager"
And yes, to confirm, the Driver wont install on this computer. It gave the message something on the lines of WINxp , I thought it was wierd. Its a Windows Vista 64 ?

 

[corkss]

This is the message I got