Mission freeze framing...Radeon upgrade?

When ever I play canned missions with more intensive actions and AI planes flying I get lots of freeze frames.

I have a Gateway1.9Mhz Pent 4 , 512mMB RDRAM PC800.
My graphics card is a....... Nvidia Geforce3 64 MB DDR .
I noticed that I can get a ATI RADEON 9550 256MB DDR graphics card for $99.

Would upgrading to the Radeon get rid of this freezing?

Is this a tough thing to hook-up in my computer? The new card has the same slot interface.

Is getting the drivers difficult for this kind of change, especially since this is a Gateway box?

Any Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I’d like to know if this is an easy job to tackle. Thanks.

you could probably get a 9800pro for that money chap... and it probably is your gfx that's holding it back - mine gets a bit choppy when the sky is busy.... Might be worth seeing if you can get a hold of an extra 512mb RAM as well.. this game eats memory for breakfast, lunch and dinner.. then spits it out in a quivering lump of abused silicon...