How to optimize PC for games

My son is now gaming on his PC, I'd like to learn how to optimize or tweak his PC to play some games without glitching. Here are the specs;

AMD Anthlon II x2 220 processor 2.8 GHz

4 GB installed and an ATI Radeon 4200 graphics card

Please don’t suggest I buy a new graphics card and power source, I figured that out all by my lonesome, but money is tight being disabled. Besides, he’s 10, he isn’t playing GTA V he’s playing Minecraft and flash games.
The question is how do I optimize what I’ve got? I’m not above adding memory cards, but that’s the most I can afford, so how do I dedicate memory from his desktop to help the gaming? Am I supposed to plug the monitor into the PC using the standard jack or the one with a ton of pins? (I tried this once I think and got a blank screen)

Thanks Folks

 

You always help when I ask, thanks
Yes, it is rectangular and white, much bigger than what I assume is the "VGA" connector, 64 bit and here's the rest
Physical memory total 3839
cached 2330
available 2737
free 465
kernal memory
paged 285
nonpaged 58

 

Hey DDP. this might simplify things for you since I've never been very knowledgeable about the hardware aspects of a PC (which is strange since I once stripped a laptop down to the PCB and put it all back together, I'm good with electronics)
It is an HP P6803W and has a VGA and DVI port..the video card is integrated, I do recall hooking up the monitor to my very nice 22" Samsung monitor using the DVI and got no video...
Here are all the specs from HP
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c02859378

 

This program is free for the next 32 hrs
EZ Game Booster Pro v1.5 - One-Click to Optimize PC in Real Time! (lifetime license)

http://www.giveaway-club.com/

 

I explained this poorly, I tried to connect the large adapter (called DWI) from the tower to my monitor and got no signal

 

and its about as useful as tits on a boar.

 

Sorry, I meant DVI

 

Unless you're a male Boar, heh heh

 

I don't know anything about PC graphics or video connections, but I know a ton about home theater video setup and in that "world", there's a big difference in the connection you use. If you use the red/white and yellow connections (I assume VGA in PC-Speak) instead of HDMI for your connections, it's practically the difference between VCR quality video and Hi Def video, your video will be pixelated, but the larger display, the more obvious the poor connection...so I can see how input choices would be less critical on a 21" PC monitor. Is that what you meant?

 

meant the game booster program when i said useless by the way.

 

Oh, thanks.. I figured his post was just spam

 

I like playing games on Dell monitor

 

So, do it.

 

Whether a game will play on the system depends on whether the games code is CPU or GPU optimized and how resource demanding the is. Many games will run only a single CPU thread so single core performance becomes important. Judging by your specs you're not going to be able to play a great number of games so research the games before considering. The best bet is to start with games that offer a trial so that you will know if your son's PC will run a game before purchasing or look for some great freeware games to be safe. Here's a thread of someone with a system that's considerably more more powerful than your sons and yet his system is just barely able to run a game that runs quite easily on a Q9650 with a lesser graphics card. I'm playing the game and am a member of the forum so I followed the thread.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61053