What is the best NES emulator for me?

[CAMc]

I have tried many NES emulators and they all have slow, choppy gameplay. While I am not very computer-literate, I have determined through research, that the GPU on my computer is lacking. My computer, a Gateway SOLO 5300, is coming up on 14 years old.
ZSNES works great for me, but from what I have read, that is only because it uses low level code, whatever that means.
Is there an NES equivalent to ZSNES in terms of system requirements?

[ulaoulao]

Unfortunately they are all about the same, the fastest would be nestical. Its a dos based emulator and very fast! Depending on your os, it may or may not be hard to run.

from what I have read, that is only because it uses low level code, whatever that means.

Someone got that backwards? High-level emulation is for slower computers but also the latest technology.

Low-level, reads data from the game and tries to emulate chip by chip most accurately.
High-level is more like a wrapper to make the running game thinks its on a console. It uses tricks to skip math crunching operation so speed up or satisfy the results.

A true low level is more like the atari emulators or bsnes. A great example of high level is ultraHLE. The emulator that showed n64 emulation could be done.

[CAMc]

I tried NESticle, and it is the closest I have had to working. FCEUltra works when I use it in a small window, but it is hard to see.