I recently built a new computer, here are the specs:
i5-3570k
ASRock Z77 Po3
320GB Seagate Hard Drive
2 x 4GB Samsung DDR3 1600 RAM
I recently encountered about $100. Would it be better to buy a graphics card with it or an ssd. What would give me better performance overall and what would be better for games. Also, would an $100 graphic card be much better than the Intergrated graphics (Intel HD 4000 Graphics)?
Pretty much any $100.00 graphics card will improve the onboard graphics. Having a separate graphics card also takes a load off your CPU. However, that having been said an SSD will speed up the load time of your OS. I use 2 SSD, one for my OS and the updates for the OS and the other for my games. Personally I would go for the SSD and wait to save up more money for a quality graphics card. You have an Ivy Bridge processor and your board has a PCI-E 3.0 so if you save up your coin you can put one kick ass GPU in what you already have. Personally I would never go back to an HDD for my OS now that I have discovered the speed of a SSD. There, my official 2 cents worth.
Depends on what you're doing. Intel HD 4000 is respectable for most uses, but not really sufficient for a serious gamer. SSD's increase system responsiveness by quite a bit, and can cut down on power consumption (~6w), however they offer no real performance boost, just faster load times. A dedicated GPU would dramatically increase gaming performance, but personally, anything short of a 7770 isn't really worth it.