Graphics Card needed?

[Shane198three]

My Girlfriend has a Dell Inspiron 531s

She is running StarCraft 2 at 7FPS

if I put this graphics card ASUS EN210 SILENT/DI/1GD3/V2(LP) GeForce 210 Video Card - 1GB, DDR3, PCI-Express 2.0, DVI, VGA, HDMI, DirectX 10.1, Low Profile, Single-Slot at TigerDirect.com

how much will this improve it?

the guy at tigerdirect said that its not only about the graphics card memory. I just wanna get her FPS up.

thoughts?

 

[IknowLITTLE]

im not the best at this stuff but if it has on board graphics that has to at least bump it up to 20-30 i would think on low graphics. but, im not the most knowledgeable so dont hold me on it. think of this reply as a bump.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

I can't find a specific spec (there are several it seems) for the 531s. Could you list the full spec? Cpu model and speed, Ram speed/type and amount etc.

If she's only running a gig or so RAM and an Athlon 64, then the card probably won't help much.


Post-googling:

Looking around on Dell's site a little, i found a specific range of specs for 531's. It says that they range in installed RAM from 512MB to 1GB - you might need to do a memory upgrade as well, to get much of a framerate improvement.

IT also lists the processor as either an Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2 or Sempron. If it's the Athlon 64 or Sempron, you might have trouble getting much of an improvement from other upgrades, but the Athlon 64 X2 should be perfectly capable of running SCII in my mind.

So yeah, whether or not it would make much of a difference depends on what you can tell me about the rest of her system. ^_^

 

[thiefraccoon]

you should've really posted the spec of that computer.
If the spec is any similar to this
Dell Inspiron 531 Specs - Desktops - CNET Reviews
(See? making everyone who want to help you go through more trouble...)
graphic card will help a bit,
but all the spec is really BARELY above SC2 minimum system requirements.
So if you upgrade the GPU, you will see a slight increase in performance, but before it can do all it can,
you will be bottlenecked by your CPU or RAM.

bottom line, that computer just isn't very good for playing SC2.

 

[Sefrotox]

Frame rate depends on more than just the display card. It is likely that if the card you are looking at now is better than the current that you will gain a little frame rate. Though if other hardware is far from the speeds of the new display card, then you will not get out as much as the card could actually do.