Hello, I am pretty new to gaming on the computer, and I don't know if my computer will be good enough to play some games on it. I recently bought Halo, but on the lowest settings I can only get about 15-20 fps on single player and about 25-30 on multiplayer. I am questioning weither or not to get a new video card... I want to play Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2 and possibly Unreal Tounrament 2004. I have: 2 Pentium 4 processor 3.182Ghz 2.0 GB RAM nVidia GeForce FX5200 Is this suffficent to play some of these games?

CPU is OK, plenty of RAM, but you have one of the worst DX9 supporting video cards made. Do you know what upgrade slot (PCI, AGP, pr PCI-E) you have available? What's your budget for a new card?

In my System Information it says under the FX5200's I.D that it is a PCI device, so I assume PCI. I thought about getting an ATI Raeon(sp?) 9550, it is only $100, which is what my budget is aiming for, under or at $100.

Nator, that info doesn't mean it's a PCI device. You need to pop your machine open and take a look. Even if it was PCI, you still could have AGP or PCI-e expansion slots. Before we can make a good recommendation, we need to know what slots are available. I will say if you have an AGP or PCI slot, I would however spending a little bit more than $100 if you can. An Nvidia 6600GT would go nice with your system. You lose a bunch of performance going lower than that. The 9550's are decent cards, but you're gonna be in the same boat as you are in now in the very near future with one of them. Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

Whoops...should read... I will say if you have an AGP of PCI-e slot... Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior!

You meant..... I will say if you have an AGP or PCI-e slot... Sometimes I wish the forum had an edit feature that stayed in effect till a follow-up response is added. StopBadware

here open the computer they are usually White:pci Brown:agp Black:pci-express Then when u go to buy one at the store they should say what type of video card it is on the top right corner of the box