GETTING A NEW GRAPHICS CARD?

Nvidia does a weird thing with how it numbers its graphic cards. They have names like GTX 660 and GT 740. The middle digit is actually the important part. For example, 660 is better than 740 because 6 is higher than 4. The first digit is the "generation", and the second is the "quality". So 760 is better than 660, but 670 is better than either of those. 670 is their higher-end model from the sixth generation and 760 is their mid-range model from the seventh generation.

Do not ask me why they number them that way. Some engineer came up with it and didn't consult the marketing department, and ten years later they still haven't come up with a more intuitive scheme. If you just walk into a store and try to figure out which one to buy, you will not have a good time.



They also have some cards with four-digit numbers, like yours, which are their cheap models. Don't get those.

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Your graphics card is only barely used to play Youtube videos though. I promise it's not what's causing the videos to lag, since even your old-ass video card is superior to the Intel graphics chip that's in 95% of modern laptops.

The problem with watching Youtube videos is definitely your RAM. You should return the RAM you bought and get a pair of 4 GB sticks of RAM, or at least a pair of 2 GB sticks. That will get you more performance than a video card will, for a small fraction of the price. 1 GB of RAM is not even enough to run an antivirus program smoothly, and 2 GB of RAM still isn't enough to play games that are less than a decade old.

You should also seriously consider upgrading your processor! Processors are one of the harder things to replace, so you will want to get someone to help you. But older processors are really really cheap. Just glancing at the first page of search results on Amazon for processors that fit into the same socket type as your computer's CPU (in other words, ones that will work in your computer), I can see that this one would be a nice upgrade for you and only costs $18. Even if you have to pay a local shop forty bucks to put it in for you, that's still a good deal! Cheaper than a new video card, for sure.

That's okay, you're allowed to be a noob.

Sorry I misread a bit of your OP, I thought you were just upgrading the two existing RAM sticks, not adding another two alongside them. 4 GB is enough to play games, just not at the highest settings.

The memory mentioned in the descriptions of the processor and graphics card is separate from what you bought, it's unrelated to the type of RAM sticks the computer uses. These components have their own internal memory that's unrelated to what you bought. The big ol' RAM sticks you bought need to be the same type that was already in your computer, original DDR style, otherwise they won't actually fit in the slots.

I'm not even slightly convinced that graphics is better than the one you have. It could very easily be worse. It's newer than yours, but it's a really really low end budget model for non-gaming computers. For comparison, my own graphics card is a 520, so it's very slightly better than the one you linked, and it can play 90% of games, but I have to put them on the lowest possible settings and they still lag sometimes. A few games like Witcher 2 and Call of Duty will not run on my 520. SMBX lags slightly every time an enemy comes on screen. You want something better than mine, not worse.

Check out this very reasonably priced GTX 640. It's not brilliant, but it's gonna play any game you want it to play. The 650 would be better but costs twice as much.

I know nothing about overclocking, sorry. I don't know how to tell what kind of power supply you need, but you're probably fine unless you're getting an insane beast of a graphics card. The only way I know how to tell how strong the one you have right now is is to open up the computer and look at the sticker on the side of the power supply in there.

Your system is obsolete. Draw up a budget for buying a new computer and what you want out of it. Any money on upgrading this machine is throwing your money away because the performance gain you get will be garbage compared to a new machine. Here's why:


1) 32-bit Windows XP has a maximum amount of addressable memory of 4GB total. This is shared across all hardware including inside the motherboard and the GPU. If you got that gpu LockeZ posted (don't, it's garbage too) your total available RAM would be ~2.75GB. 1GB for the gpu, about 250MB for general hardware on the motherboard, and the rest of the addressable memory is RAM. The only way to get around this is to install a 64-bit operating system and Windows XP 64-bit got a token amount of support from third parties at its height and nothing now will have support for it. Hell, I seriously doubt there's even 32-bit XP drivers for current hardware. XP is done, past end of life, and nobody is going to continue supporting it for consumers who aren't going to pay them money to do so. You need an up to date operating system.

Also I don't think XP even supports hardware accelerated video decoding (which flash will use to decode h264 videos which high res youtube videos are encoded as if available).

(also fuck vista)


2) Your system is nearly a decade old. Hardware won't last forever, especially hard drives and power supplies. If the PSU goes (it will!) it will very likely take other hardware components with it. Increasing its power draw with a new GPU or overclocking will only accelerate this time bomb. All the core hardware has gone through multiple generations and upgrading in the same generation will only give meager gains instead of jumping all the way to the latest. Spend a bit more now will get you a computer that will last a lot longer than a bandaid fix on something that could fail next month.


3) Even if you eliminate one bottleneck your hardware is so old it'll hit another one right away. Your RAM is slow and limited but even if that was fixed then you need to deal with your CPU being a single core architecture that's over a decade old. Software now uses parallelization to take advantage of multiple cores and your instructions per cycle is tiny compared to what modern processors can do. This is why you also don't compare clock speeds across cpu architectures or generations, it's like trying to compare how far a midget and a giant walk if they both take the same number of steps per minute. Upgrading your GPU will just make games lag because they need more CPU horsepower which your system can't deliver.


There's more but those are the big ones. Depending on your budget you might want a prebuilt computer that you can expand on (and spend a few hours running clean up tools to get rid of garbage like Norton and various malware) or try building one yourself.

In either case, if you want a new GPU I recommend the NVidia 750 Ti. NewEgg link for various models. It uses the newest Maxwell architecture from Nvidia and it blows the last generation comparable model out of the water. It takes all of its power from the pci-e slot and not an additional 12v rail but you'll still want to look at the 12V output your PSU can output (it should be on a sticker on the PSU itself) because the PSU might not be able to handle its demands.

(but I 100% recommend looking at getting a whole new computer)

My Windows XP machine with 4GB of RAM, an early dual core processor, and a GTX 520 can run games like Arkham Asylum, Diablo 3, League of Legends, Dragon Age 1 and 2, Bioshock, and 90% of most games. I obviously agree he will still end up with a crummy computer, but it will be a crummy gaming computer for under $150, which seems to be what he wants.

I agree his system is trash which is why I suggested upgrading multiple components with mediocre upgrades instead of spending his whole budget on a nice graphics card. obviously though, yeah, upgrading instead of replacing is a questionable use of cash.

Second that. I built mine for less than 400 bucks years ago buying pieces off alternate and still can run everything on it. Perhaps not the maximum anti-aliasing, but I can't see a goddamn difference after a certain degree anyway (had someone help me put it together, but it actually isn't that hard)
Just don't dump it all on the CPU. Graphic cards and RAM are more important for gaming.

Still, if it's a bandaid he wants, that's fine.