Integrated graphics have come a long way from their beginnings.  But in many cases they are there purely to run the basics and that's it.  With that in mind, having the space and support for a separate video card means you can painlessly change it up for a better model to suit your needs.

Of course the exception is if you have lots of money to burn, but being on the cutting edge of technology is not always fun.

Integrated graphics have focused on simulating functions that real GPUs have, and staying power-lean. In terms of "horsepower" (for gaming and video editing), they offer no more or less than they did when they arrived compared to discrete GPUs. One area they've done good advances is in supporting the CPU to playback HD movies.

My laptop has Intel integrated graphics HD family. Works for me.

Simplistic Benchmarking can be had via the built-in WEI in Win7.....

My Laptop [ASUS R500A] has Intel HD4000 graphics and gets a WEI of 4.6.

My Desktop has a ASUS GTX590 card and gets a WEI of 7.9. [maximum].

The GTX590 cost $200 more than the entire laptop.

From the benchmarks I saw, they are good to provide basic OpenGL and Direct3D hardware support for applications that need them, but if you are thinking about gaming, you can safely forget them, unless you want to run everything in low detail and/or low resolution. The lack of dedicated video memory is the main problem.

Just to restate, I'm not a gamer and with the i5 CPU and 16GB of DDR3 ram I think I'm okay.

It's ok but onboard gpu uses some of your cpu capability no matter how they slice it.  If you can move it off the board and get the same benefit from a ten dollar card, it's a cheap upgrade.

In the future, you'll wish you had the extra oomph.  

Beats me why anyone has 16GB of RAM without using it to game.  I mean that's just criminal, that is.  Unless you have RAM-hungry applications, then I can understand.

Yeah, but with just a 300w PSU, a graphics card upgrade is likely to require a PSU upgrade as well... so it wouldn't that cheap, really.  I think the machine could do with a PSU upgrade anyway, as it leaves no scope for upgraded or additional hardware without the risk of overload and burning it out, thus taking the mobo and other stuff with it.  A 600w -800w doesn't cost a lot these days, and I think it would be a wise investment regardless of any upgrades.

• The integrtated HD2000 GPU is a nice addon if you want to make a nice low noise office pc- if you dont play that much games its good enough to make you happy - 

However if you want to play current videogames with frostbite engine for example on high end settings the chip will not be enough. 
To give you an example HD3000 can run Skyrim not modificated on high detail just fine i think the HD2000 will do the same on medium settings
Its by far not true that the intel gpu´s chipsets are bad.

@starkers very true...

Philly did you run this, I'll admit I'm curious:

@ starkers I guess I must not be much of computer person, probably should stick with pen/pencil and paper. 

I don't see a need to upgrade the power supply for the following reasons.

1. The integrated graphics seem to be working fine so no need to add a video card

2. The computer is wifi ready, no card needed.

3. I use a 46in LED TV as my monitor which is connected to a home theater system so the sound off the mobo is okay, no sound card needed.

4. I do run a USB HD Docking Station but it doesn't get it's power through the USB connection, has a power cord.

All this means that there are four PCI slots that have nothing in them and thus not adding internal heat to the system

Tell me if I'm missing something or being shortsighted.

@ DaveRI I thought that because I didn't have a video card installed was the reason I couldn't run WEI.  I have sent an email off to Gateway to see what the problem is.  Once they get back to me I will let you know what they say.