Need help with a good, cheap spec upgrade.

Pretty much only ram that you can upgrade being a laptop. Not knowing exactly what you have then I can not tell you much.

You *might* be able to put in a new CPU depending on what laptop you have- in some models, the CPU is soldered in. But if you have anything over a Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz, upgrading the CPU isn't going to help out a huge amount. As for the RAM, anything over 4GB isn't going to make a difference on a laptop, where the huge majority of the time the graphics card is the bottleneck... and sadly it is extremely difficult (normally impossible) to replace the video card on a laptop. As far as software goes, you can can try to remove some background startup processes (Msconfig or ccleaner) and you can defrag your hdd (which will help system responsiveness, but not your fps). It's also worth checking that your graphics drivers are up to date, as you might pick up some performance if new drivers were issued.

Thanks for the info guys. I managed to get info on the computer, but sadly I'm afraid Edge is right. This... Thing, cannot be changed what-so-ever. Time to save up I guess!  

Operating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120503-2030)
Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory : 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory : 6050MB RAM
DirectX Version : DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters : Not found
Current Clock Speed : 792MHz

Card Name : Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000
Manufacturer : Intel Corporation
Chip Type : Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
Display Memory : 1696 MB
Memory Speed : 1333 MHz

Motherboard
Model : N53SV
Manufacturer : ASUSTeK Computer Inc.


If that raises any alarms, please let me know.

That is fine as is but is never going to be a gaming machine with the HD3000 IGP. really nothing you can do to increase gaming performance.