It looks like you already have a video card. I'm not aware of any Dells having onboard nVidia video. They'd have Intel onboard video if anything. While that card is old, I don't think installing a new one will help. If you have a video card and the CPU is being given the load, the task you're doing simply doesn't benefit from video hardware acceleration. If Java uses the CPU, there's not much that can be done about it.

Also to note, alot of games use 100% CPU time, but they're not really always fully using it. It's just CPU time marked as set aside for it. Unless your CPU literally crawls or freezes, it's not really using it all and is probably nothing to worry about.

Just checked under device manager again and it says:

Nvidia gforce 4 mx 420

Location: PCI bus 1

device 0

function 0

The only thing I have added to my original Dell is 256 memory card.

perhaps I was mistaken in my original post in saying it was integrated.
But this is the card that came with the DELL.

The other issue I have with online gaming is the lag. Hoping a
upgraded card would help with that, as well as the high CPU usage.

The GeForce4 MX 420 version uses SDRAM, and is not good for games in any sense, and wasn't even when it came out. That's regarding 3D. Any card these days and within the last few years should have no problem with 2D. PCI bus 1 is your AGP if your PC has AGP. If you want to upgrade the video card and you do just light gaming, a 6600 or 7600GS would be my recommendation. If it's just for flash and JAVA games though, that would be overkill as that's usually done by the majority on your CPU, so then I'd recommend staying with what you have.

Lag can be caused by alot of things, but your internet connection is usually the cause. If CPU usage is at 100% AND the computer freezes, locks up, or lags, your CPU is having trouble keeping up and that's likely the problem. If your CPU is at 100% BUT your computer runs at normal speed, see my above post becuase that can be normal. To find out if you need an upgrade before you go and spend cash, you need to find out if your PC actually feels like it's lagging or if the resource meter simply shows what's being utilized.

some times when i run frostwire which is a java bases program it uses up 50%of my cpu and im running core 2 duo 1.8 1 gig ram

it might be a buggy java run time yea im running it in linux so yea i don,t use windows its not linux but like i said it only happens some of the times

That would mean Java is reserving 100% of one of your cores, which means my guess was right. Alot of programs utilize and/or reserve 100% CPU time, but that's different than your CPU actually having all of it's resources taxed.

To the OP, unless the computer actually slows down while this happens, it's normal. Java will not benefit from hardware acceleration, so an upgrade won't help here. It's simply programed into the program to reserve the entire CPU. It doesn't mean it's using it all or that you have a bottleneck. It's when you notice slowdown's that you need to worry about it.

Bobman,

Thanks for the info. I thought that the computer was actually using the
amount of cpu that was shown in the task manager window. Didnt realize
that programs could "reserve" cpu power and that "reserve" would show up in the
task manager.

I will stop worrying about the numbers in the cpu column unless it slows the
computer down.