He AO,

I know this is a comp sec forum (or was at one time ) - but I need a little advice:

So my stepdad has an old Sony Vaio PCV-RS410(UC). It's got a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 (single core), and I've added 1GB RAM. I also slapped a 256MB GeForce FX 5500 PCI card I had in it.

He plays a lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), and the card does alright for the game, but he can't play it on the highest detailed settings - so, like, he can't land a helicopter on the Empire State Building, stuff like that...

I thought I'd get him a better card for an early Christmas after I found that NewEgg still sells PCI video cards - I bought him a VGA JATON|VIDEO-498PCI-TWIN 9400GT 1GB PCI video card.

I got it installed, and the thing runs worse than the 256MB card! I tried different drivers (from the CD, from nVidia and from the Jaton website), updating DirectX, playing with the nVidia panel settings - but nothing - graphics are just slooow!!! And sometimes leaves little short horizontal lines on the screen

But the PSU I had was only 180W (I thought it was a 430W - I work on lots of computers and get mixed-up sometimes :P) - So I went out and dropped $60 on a CoolerMax 500W PSU, thinking maybe it just wasn't getting enough power... but meh - no difference...

So what do you guys think? Should I RMA the card, and just wait until I have $200 to upgrade to a better mobo and CPU and get a PCIe card? Or do you think the card is just defective, and I should try another one? I'm $140 into this thing, and the game runs worse than it did when I set out to "do something nice"...

That's what happens I guess...

Anyway, thanks for anyone who actually read through all this mess. I really appreciate any feedback I could get on the matter. (or maybe just a "tl;dr" :P)

Thanks guys!