Is it possible or worth my effort?

I have a e-machine t6212 and am having problems running pc games on. the problem being that even with the games set to run at bare bones min. they still run choppy and the graphics are terrible. Without any cash to really go out and purchase a gaming rig I was wondering what I could do to possibly make this pc work if at all possible. I have read that it is possible to upgrade this model but do not know what to look for. The only change I have made is to upgrade the hard drive from 160 to 500. It currently has a AMD 64 processor and ATI Radion Express 200 vid. I would like to add 2 sticks of 512 memory but would like to know what kind my machine takes and also I would like to upgrade the graphics/vid card but again do not know what this machine will accept. I am pretty much a novice when it comes to doing upgrades etc. So if anyone can recommend something for me on the above issues I would very much appreciate it.
Thanks All

 

Choppy video is usually the result of shared RAM with onboard graphics cards.

I gave a quick look through the manual but it doesn't seem to indicate if the graphics card is upgradeable although a couple of the images show a video upgrade slot.

The best way to know for sure would be to remove the side panel and look. They are calling the onboard graphics PCI Express so I would suspect the upgrade slot would also be PCI Express if there is one.

This pic will show you the difference in the two video cards to help you determine what you may have.

 

It has a PCIe slot.
http://reviews.cnet.com/eMachines_T6212/4505-3118_7-31341178.html#reviewPage1

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1789752,00.asp

The big concern is the PSU. It may not have the juice to power a newer card. It's another cost to consider.

 

Hi,
http://www.crucial.com/uk/systemscanner/index.aspx

this will tell you what type/amount of Ram you can upgrade to, i think your board is capable of 4GB, as for the video card you can pick up a good quality one fairly cheaply nowadays, your board is an ATI chipset so you need to look for an ATI PCI Express card, http://www.amd.com/us/products/Pages/graphics.aspx

Ebay is also a good place to look for both Ram and Video card.

iain.t :major