On board gpu question

[Jay Santos]

If a cpu has an on board apu and I use a discrete gpu, will the processing power reserved for the apu be used to help the cpu?

My nephew has a super low end PC.
MSI AM1I motharboard
AMD 2650 1.45ghz dual core
8gb ram
500gb hd
1280x1024 17" monitor.

Basically he's a noob at PC gaming. He's playing Half Life (original), Serious Sam and classic Counter Strike.

I want to give him my old GTX 960 SSC 2gb version.
I know it's severely overkill for his system. He doesn't have much money and the only way to get more power and performance is to go with a better cpu/mobo. But that's out of the question.

If I buy him a quad core cpu of the same socket, would he see a good performance increase?

Below are what I have in mind.
AMD AM1 Athlon 5150 Quad Core 1.6 Ghz $20
AMD AM1 Athlon 5350 Quad Core 2.05 Ghz $27

He's totally fine with gaming at 1280x1024 @ 30fps. For now.

He says he'll get a job throughout next year and build a proper PC. Is the $20-$27 cpu upgrade worth it?

 

[Justiceinacan]

I believe that once a discrete video card is detected, the APU graphics are shut off. By the way "on-board APU" is a misunderstanding; "APU" is AMD's marketing term for a CPU that contains a Radeon graphics processor on-die. Just figured you might want to know.

He might see a bit of an increase in CSS for instance but then you have Half Life which literally runs on a .5 GHz processor. IMO, you could go either way, $20 isn't a terribly large investment in my eyes but the performance increase might not make a terribly large difference in what he does now.

 

[geofelt]

Why not try out the GTX960 and see how he does?
He will need a 450w psu.

Then, you can decide what to do about cpu power.