Graphics card - good enough or not?

[sorcerer]

I'm not a gamer of any sort (PC or console) so I just need a bit of advice about graphics cards.

I'll not bore you with the back story but the motherboard specs are (or will be):

Mfgr / Model: System manufacturer - System Product Name (System Version)
Serial#: System Serial Number
CPU String: Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5800 @ 3.20GHz
CPU Actual: 3214 MHz HT/Multi Core (2)
MB: ASUSTeK Computer INC. - P5G41T-M LX2/GB - Rev X.0x
BIOS: Version: 0405 - Date: 11/22/2010
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220
Vid Driver: Driver Version: 8.17.12.7533 - Date: 5-20-2011
RAM: 4,061 MB

The lad wants to play 'Minecraft' - that's the only game he's bothered about and his parents want to keep the cost down, so the brief is a 'general-purpose computer with the ability to play Minecraft' rather than a gaming machine per se.

Minecraft requirements are:

Recommended Requirements:

CPU : Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
RAM : 4GB
GPU : GeForce 6xxx or ATI Radeon 9xxx and up with OpenGL 2 Support (Excluding Integrated Chipsets)
HDD : 150MB

Admittedly, I'm not 'up' on my graphics card terminology in this context so, (a) does the integrated GeForce GT220 trump the GeForce 6xxx requirement, and (b) what does it mean "excluding integrated chipsets" - will it not work with integrated chipsets or something? Any recommendations for something better that won't break the bank?

Thanks

 

[brandonkick]

The solution he has should be plenty, if they really wanted an big upgrade you could purchase just about anything and it would be ok.

That GT 220 is about inline with the video card I purchased in 2006, which was a radeon X1800XT. You can pick up a radeon HD 6670 for about $60 and it would be a major upgrade to what he has now.

The things I would be careful of:

Don't let them upgrade to a really new big powerful card as

1) the power supply in that system probably won't handle it

2) the processor will bottleneck the new powerful cards

EDIT:

The plain minecraft game will work just fine with what he has. It's minimum requirements, the intel GMA 950 (which is an integrated chipset) is way below the GT 220 he has.

The games recommended requirements are not much above what he has now. The $60 card I have listed will shoot him WAY past what he needs
for this game, and from what I've gathered any of the "add-on" or "mods" to minecraft.

 

[sorcerer]

That's great, thanks very much for your reply my friend.