will this help or not?

my son has this mobo in his new comp.MSI 785GT-E63 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard with an integrated ATI Radeon HD 4200 chipset, will it be helpful if i added a geforce 8500gt ddr2 512mb pcie card to boost his video or not ?

Probably not enough that it would really be noticeable. About the only real advantage adding something like the 8500GT (which wasn't very good when it came out) is it will free up whatever system ram is being used by the onboard video.

Assuming this would be for games, what games? Also how much are you looking to spend if you get a card?

i've just been over to techarp.com, where they have long lists of figures for graphics chips over the years.

according to them, the 8500gt should blow the 4200 out of the water, as far as games go - see below.

however, the 8500gt will probably draw more power and get hotter that the 4200, so make sure your power supply unit is powerful enough, and that the case cooling is sufficient.

edit - better picture:

you don't really need to know what the technical stuff means, just look at the numbers: higher = faster

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