Upgrading an HP pavillion a142n

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spartan1121

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Well my brothers have a cheap HP computer, and they're trying to play roller coaster tycoon 3. The problem is they're getting a lot of lag when they have a full park built and open. It's running a Pentium 4 3.06 ghz, 512 mb of RAM, and internal graphics. Im guessing thet with roller coaster tycoon, they'll see the biggest performance increase with a new processor. What would you guys suggest i do to upgrade? Im pretty sure that there's no AGP or PCI-e ports, so i doubt i graphics is going to be an easy upgrade. And what problems might i run into when upgrading a brand PC like this?
 
you should upgrade the memory. i think that will help plenty, especially when you have a lot of information allocated (i.e. a theme park full of roller coasters).

go up to at least 1gb, or 2gb if you're feeling generous.
 
You are correct, you only have PCI slots.

Actually, you're CPU isn't that bad. Another 512 of RAM (or more) would help. And so would a graphics card.

While the newest cards won't work, the PCI cards on the market will still beat your integrated graphics. You have either a 250 or a 300 watt PSU (look and see, the HP specs page didn't list it), so be sure to get a card that doesn't require more juice than you have (915GV).
 
Alright thanks guys, Im not exactly sure what my brother's budgets are, But 1 gb of ram isn't too expensive. They probably wont be able to afford both RAM and a graphics card, and since the problem seems to be when they have a lot of people walking around the park, and rides running, im thinking that RAM would be more of a benefit then the graphics card. Too bad they don't have an agp slot, i could give them my fx 5200 from my old dell lol. Also, can you give me that link to the HP page? im gonna need to know what RAM the motherboard can handle.
 
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