Presario compaq

how can I tell if a agp video card would be better than the onboard video the model is sr 1222nx . this is my sons Hes thinking about buying a card Thanks Oldfart

I took a look at the specs of that comp, and shocking enough, it has a PCI-Express video card slot. It does not have an AGP slot, so you are in better shape than you thought. It all depends on how much money you would like to spend really. If your son is not into playing high end games, any cheap card will do. Of course, you will need to buy a better power supply if you decide to buy a quality video card.

virtually any video card will beat on board - unless you go look for a pci or really really low end card (like x300 cards or really old ones that nobody should be able to find)

if the system is this:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...888&dlc=en#N393
then not only will any video cardbeat it, but there is also a severe lack of ram. it is a rather aged computer.... so to get anything decent from it you'd have to upgrade ram and video card atleast, and even then, there will not be any major gaming going on... older titles would probably play fine with a 1 gig ram upgrade and probably a 7600gt or something in that range. anythign above that would probably be overkill IMO because it has a single cored outdated slow processor and comes with stock 256 mb ram...