I'm sure you all know more about graphics cards then I do, and I was wondering what your opinion is on the geforce gt 610 is. I bought SOMA recently, and it's a bit laggy. Is it possible to not use a graphics card to its fullest potential or am I just too poor to afford a good one?

Its possible, but it generally only happens if you have for example a powerful graphics card but a really weak processor, on a game that's demanding on both. Generally games care much more about your graphics card, but If your processor is old enough, that could cause you problems too.

You can look up what processor you have on windows by pressing the start button, then clicking on Computer, then System properties at the top of the window that appears (Windows 7), or pressing ctrl+shift+esc and then clicking the performance tab in windows 8/10. If you can post the name of your processor, we'll have a better picture.
Just make sure you include the whole name down to the model number (Intel Core i5-2500, etc), and even better the manufacturer and model of the computer itself, if it was bought pre-built.

Sorry to say the GT 610 is a very low-end card, to give video to cheap or aging office PCs. While its perfectly capable of playing older games from around 2007-2008 and earlier, as you've seen its gonna choke on some of the newer games.

Now I don't know anything about where you live and there are unfortunately areas where PC hardware is obscenely expensive, but generally you can get a good graphics card upgrade for about the price of two new big-name games, or less. For example, a GTX 750 Ti with 2gb of VRAM can be bought for around $110 (free shipping), or $90 refurbished from the manufacturer (no idea about shipping cost)

The 750ti has been shown to be slightly more powerful than the graphics chips in the Xbox One or PS4, and it is wonderfully compatible with a wide range of computers because of its incredibly low electricity use for a desktop graphics card. It doesn't need an extra power connector like most other graphics cards, and in most cases even the crappy power supplies included with cheapass office PCs can feed it enough electricity. You could most likely pull out the 610 and plug in the 750ti in its place with no issue, and it will be a huge upgrade over the 610. You'll be able to go back and replay your collection of games on high settings!

The processor is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz 3.10 GHz and the computer itself was made by a friend of my brother in college. I bought the parts and he put them together.

I'm sure you all know more about graphics cards then I do, and I was wondering what your opinion is on the geforce gt 610 is. I bought SOMA recently, and it's a bit laggy. Is it possible to not use a graphics card to its fullest potential or am I just too poor to afford a good one?

Well that's good news then! It may be a bit old and only dual core but the "sandy bridge" series are solid processors that people are still using today, It shouldn't stop you from playing games, I just asked cause I was worried it might be a really old processor from 2008 or something.

And if the computer was put together by hand it is almost certainly going to be compatible with the graphics card I mentioned.

The GTX 750/750 Ti is just my go-to recommendation because it has decent enough price/performance, is relatively cheap without being too cheap to perform well in games, and is almost never incompatible with a PC due to power supply issues. As long as the power supply included with your PC is 500w or better, and has a couple of these connectors coming out of it (I'd be surprised if yours didn't), you could also look into some other comparable graphics cards if they turn out to be cheaper from online stores or craigslist/ebay/whatever:

• AMD R7 250x
• AMD R7 260
• AMD R7 260x
• Nvidia GTX 650 Ti
All should be around $100 or less

These all require at least one of those 6-pin PCI-E power connectors to be plugged into them in order to work. The GTX 750 generally doesn't need the connector.

If you've got enough of a budget, consider seeking out these slightly more expensive but more powerful cards:


• AMD R7 370, new card, much better than 750ti, $150 range
• AMD R9 380 or Nvidia GTX 960, competing mid-range cards, $200 range

Older cards you might want to look out for, sometimes these will pop up as refurbished/used/b-stock, for low prices, especially around the holidays and this "black friday" thing


• AMD Radeon 7870
• AMD Radeon 7950/7970
• AMD R9 270/270x
• AMD R9 280/280x
• Nvidia GTX 660/660ti
• Nvidia GTX 670
• Nvidia GTX 680
• Nvidia GTX 760
• Nvidia GTX 770
• Nvidia GTX 780