Novice question regarding graphics cards \ memory for FM10

My PC is 3 years old, and runs FM10 really slow. I only have 512MB RAM, and the graphics card is lame, in the sense that 3D won't run at all on my game.

What I want to know is, is it the amount of RAM that's slowing the general game down? Would the graphics card speed up the game, or just enable me to play 3D? Lastly, has anyone got any good recommendations for good graphics cards, or even a semi-decent one that doesn't cost any more than £50 (if there is such thing!) Tbh I'm far more concerned about the speed of the game (and how everything else on my PC slows to a crawl when I have FM playing, like Firefox etc) rather than watching the 3D, as although I'm sure it's great, I'm happy with 2D at the moment.

What processor do you have? Cause FM is a CPU intensive game; your CPU is required to calculate all of the results in your FM game. Concerning the slowdown when trying to run both Firefox and FM10, that is almost entirely down to the low amount of RAM you have. The more RAM you have, the more applications can be loaded(into memory/RAM) at one time. Where as if you have only 512MB RAM, FM10 and Firefox can't be loaded into the RAM at the same time. The bottom line is that a CPU with a higher clockspeed (Ghz) and/or more cores will noticeably lessen the amount of time you spend waiting for the pc to finish 'processing' results in FM. Whilst more RAM will both improve the sluggish performance you're experiencing in FM and when trying to open Firefox while FM is running.

If you don't mind playing in 2d (like me, even on a new computer that can run 3d) then you'll want to look at increasing your ram to at least 2gb, possibly 3gb. Also depends on what kind of processor you have (my old one was a 1.6ghz dual-core that was just pitiful...but I could still play with 7 leagues from 6 countries and a db of 30,000+ players.)

Thanks guys..my Processer is Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz...but I think doubling (or tripling?) my RAM may be the best\ most easiest way to go, especially as all I mainly want is for the game to run faster.

For the game to run faster u need both new ram and new cpu.... more ram doesnt really help if the cpu is slow .

Btw another fairly noobish question...does it matter what specific RAM i buy? As in, will all of it be compatible with my DELL Dimension 4600? Thanks.

Yes, it does. Try this site http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx and it should tell you how much memory your computer can hold and, more importantly, what kind of memory. Then go to this site http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and look in the searchable cpu page (find cpu box) and type in your chipset to see how it performs. If the processor's pretty low you'd be better off saving up for a new computer; if money's tight than I'd just go with a simple memory upgrade and see how that works out, as it's the cheaper of the two options.

As others have said it's the RAM that is the bottleneck here. You don't need a new CPU but upping your RAM to 2GB or more will make the game run much faster.