Why trying to play GTA San Andreas but it plays like crap on my new comp ...?

I picked up a new computer a few weeks ago and I was looking forward to playing a few games on it. It's a Dell Dimension E521 with Vista, 2 GB of RAM, an Athlon X2 4000+ processor, an nVidia 8500 GT 256 MB graphics card, and a 22in LCD monitor. Sounded OK to me especially for $750ish...but I picked up GTA San Andreas and it runs really choppy on it. My computer specs seem to be much higher than the game suggests to. Is the 8500 just a crappy card? It should be able to play 2 year old games you'd think.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Why trying to play GTA San Andreas but it plays like crap on my new comp ...?imax theatre

The 8500GT isn't great, though it should be plenty good enough to run a game that old without a problem. Try updating the drivers.

Why trying to play GTA San Andreas but it plays like crap on my new comp ...?performing show opera theater

thats your problem, 1 its vista, and 2 its a dell, dells are pieces of junk
The 8500GT is best for HD videos w/ Nvidia's PureVideoHD. BUT in 3D graphics, it is just comparable to a 7300GT. The cheap 8500GT w/ just ddr2 v-ram may even be slower. Try lowering game quality settings. It should run faster.