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Just recently, to solve the problem of low fps in CS source, I added 512mb RAM to my 256mb RAM that I already had. This made my pc 10x faster so I'm quite pleased, however it did not affect the FPS that I have in game. Therefore, from previous pc experience I know that a good way to make fps go up is to get rid of this crappy default dell graphics controller and maybe buy a good graphics card.

What I was wondering is if someone could give me ideas of where to find a good graphics card, and what model would be the best with the lowest price.

Hi xAcid, ram makes a significant improvement to your system, and believe it or not, helps to an extent, the game performance too. you are right though in that a good graphics card is the good way to get smooth gameplay. Couple of things: I need your system specs, you said dell, but what's in it, model etc. reason being is that some ATI cards are having problems in dell machines. Are we talking AGP or PCI? Lastly, remember that when playing online games like cs2, wow, etc. its not necessarily your computer that is making it slow down, but your connection, server you play on, and number of people make a difference in fps.

Hope this helps Cheers

Well I limited the errors possible for instance I doubt it's my connection b/c I have a charter-broadband cable connection that works quite well and avoid servers that have high latency.

My average in gameplay in a small map like Churches Gun Game is around 20-25fps, and some maps I get under 10fps b/c of how big it is(guessing on size makes lower fps?)

When I ran a Video Stress Test I got an average rate of 29.53 fps.


Anyways, as you requested here are some system specs:

Dell Inspiron 2400 PC
Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80 GHz
768MB of RAM

And my graphics card is called:
Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Controller