I bought the computer premade for 950. I know the graphics card is the weak point, thats exactly why I'm asking for tips! lol. I bought the computer from newegg btw.

What can my card not run at high settings?

What resolution do you plan to be playing games at?

Well, as of right now my monitor is only up to x1050. But I am planning on getting a larger TV that can do 1080.

I assume you mean 1680x1050 for currently and 1920x1080 for the upgrade.

In that case stick with the GTS250 for now and upgrade to a 5830 or 5850 or Fermi derivative when you get your new TV.

Wait, could i possibly find a higher res LED TV in 32 inch then 1080p? I got this TV cheap when i just wanted to be able to play PS3 in HD. But now I want to get something better. may as well get something thats still great for computer games.

lol@playing ps3 games in hd

You could get a 30" 2560x1600 monitor for about a grand I think, but you'd need something considerably more powerful than what you have now (ATi 4890, or 5850 or higher I think is good enough, or a GTX 285/295, though anyone's free to correct me if any of these are inadequate) or go for a multi-monitor setup if you get a 5870, 5970, or Crossfire some 5770s/5850s.

For graphics, you want more video RAM for higher resolutions. If you plan to play at 1080p, then you'll want at least 1GB DDR (which ~512-640 DDR2 or ~256-384 DDR3 effectively performs equally to) minimum.

Continue buying your parts online, but if you have computer parts stores locally, you can check them for the occasional deal that beats the online stores. Those don't happen often, but when they do, it's nice.

Most gaming graphics have to do with the CPU you have, the amount of system RAM you've got, the quality of the motherboard, and the GPU. Since your GPU is mostly top-notch, I'd expect you can play almost any game at full settings (especially if you're not playing online. If you play online, you'll experience a little more lag because your computer's got to worry about yet another aspect of the game). The only ones you won't be able to handle at the full settings are the overly graphics-intensive ones like Crysis.

Now, like I said, resolution mainly deals with your video RAM. If you can't do full resolution with the card you've got, just figure out what the next lowest res is at the same aspect ratio (or close to it), and downgrade, then you'll be fine, and you probably won't notice any significant difference. You can also go into your nVidia graphics software and probably designate more system RAM toward video memory (if you can't, then it's something you'll change in your BIOS). Since you're running DDR3 system memory, dedicating some of that to your video will probably get you set on that.

What motherboard is in your system? If it's a mid- to high-quality Gigabyte mobo (which Newegg loves), you'll probably already have 128MB DDR3 dedicated onboard video RAM. With that and the 256MB DDR2 on my video card, my graphics software is recognizing it as well over 1GB clocking at 900MHz. I have 8GB system memory, and I think I dedicated a full gig of that to my video as well, so with all of that together, the ATI Catalyst Control Center claims I have 3323MB video memory ahaha.

8gn is big enough, but depends on speed and latancy. Basically 8gb of 1066Mhz 9-9-9-28 is going to suck, but 8gb of 1800 7-7-7-21 is going to be much better. I've 4gb of 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 and that does the job fine.

Crysis, STALKER: Clear Sky, Shattered Horizon, Far Cry 2.
the GTS250 is just a 9800GTX+. Wait for the GF100 series in March (apparently) as you'll then have a DX11 ready card which is totally worth it (tesselation is amazing) and apparently the new cards can do 8x MSAA with no problem at all. But note "apparently".

Not necessarily true. For games, you may see a tiny imperceptible performance increase from RAM with better timings, but for the most part it doesn't matter. 4 GB of the cheapest DDR3-1333 you can find will run every modern game at max settings, provided you have the hardware to back it up. Where gaming hardware is concerned, the concern over RAM timing and latency mostly comes from number-fetishists who don't bother to understand what those numbers mean.

That said, you will need to bother with all those numbers if you're doing something RAM-intensive (scientific modeling, graphical or game design, and so on). But that probably doesn't apply to most of you reading this thread.