Well, here we go (super budget build) help please!

[BRealistic]

Open box HD 7750 DDR5 for $92 at MicroCenter.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0385360



I think it runs 100% off the mobo power (no PCI-e power plugs).
So that makes it the most powerful card available that is easy on power supplies.

[Tiny Voices]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130682

nothing nice, just a GT 520 2GB GDDR3.

Bought it to hold me over for a bit until I get a real card.

Why buy this you ask? It only cost me $9.99 at time of purchase. No mail in rebates. Microcenter had one open box so I jumped on it.

Minecraft at 1440x900 fullscreen went from 40fps to 120fps. In the native window size it runs at 250fps.

I say good purchase!

[BRealistic]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130682

nothing nice, just a GT 520 2GB GDDR3.

Bought it to hold me over for a bit until I get a real card.

Why buy this you ask? It only cost me $9.99 at time of purchase. No mail in rebates. Microcenter had one open box so I jumped on it.

Minecraft at 1440x900 fullscreen went from 40fps to 120fps. In the native window size it runs at 250fps.

I say good purchase!

For $9.99 no rebates it's a real deal.
For $69.99 (newegg price) it's a joke.

And just getting a modern card -even a weak one- with dedicated ram helps a lot in basic games like minecraft. I think the shared memory becomes a serious bottle neck (for even the newer better spec integrated chips).

[Power5]

I am shocked of the improvement. I wonder how much ram you had allocated to the integrated. I know it did not automatically allocate as much as needed like my i7/i5 setups I have seen. When I check the system tools in win7 I had 4gb of video ram on a system with only 4gb total ram installed. So it was automatically set to use as much as needed. When I set up my 760 and 780 AMD chipset boards they were only set in bios to have 128mb. I had to manually turn them up in bios to the max 512mb setting. I would be interested to know if that was not the cause of your problem. You could always disable your discrete card in the device manager and restart into bios and play around if you wanted to see if that would have helped. I mean a $9 card that is rated at around the same level as the best intel 4000 graphics chip is not too bad. Its also quite a few steps above your HD3200 on your AMD board. Not a bad buy at all for $9.

Glad you are happy with your setup now. What was your total investment?

[BRealistic]

I am shocked of the improvement.

Even though simple looking blocks... Minecraft has lots of texture maps going on, shading, animals... I wonder how much different the early alpha is compared to the current game (in terms of PC resources).
Is it so hard to believe a 3d game would work better with a better graphics card?

Its also quite a few steps above your HD3200 on your AMD board. Not a bad buy at all for $9.

Glad you are happy with your setup now. What was your total investment?

The GT 520 is probably a match for the newest on chip graphics, though the 2 GB of DDR3 ram seems silly.
Heck- op might try downloading some demos off steam to see if the card can handle newer first person gaming (at low low settings). The CPU is more than up to the task.