Low FPS rate

My first pcxs2 experience here so excuse my ignorance. I tried to run GTAIII but it gets low FPS rate in busy areas of the game.

I have 8gb ram and an intel i5 processor but a crappy graphics card. Would a better card make the game run smoother or is it something else causing it?

Most likely your graphics card .try checking the 8 bit textures and the native box in graphic plugins that seems to make alot of games run smoother for me anyways.For example Dragon quest 8, i had that problem but now runs perfect speed but you sacrifice smooth graphics.