Minecraft Lagging… What is the cause?

I recently got minecraft, and tried to run it on my computer. At first, it didn’t run at all as my computer has onboard graphics, but I downloaded an unsupported driver (unsupported by win7 that is) and finally the game booted.
Thing is, the game lags horrifically. CPU usage is at 100% during gameplay and I want to know what hardware I would have to update to have it run smoothly: purchase a graphics card, or upgrade the CPU?
Graphics card: radeon x300/x550/x1050
CPU: 2.8GHz Intel Celeron
OS: Windows 7 32-bit
I don’t have a fantastic grasp on hardware, and wanted to know what was to blame for this lagging?
I should mention, these are the minimum requirements for minecraft:
CPU 2 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent
RAM 1GB
GPU AMD 3000 or Nvida equivalent
I hope someone can help me.
Thanks
Answer #1
Have you updated java to it’s latest release?
Answer #2
Thanks for your help. I just updated. It somewhat increased the game’s running, but only slightly.
When monitoring the PC hardware during this proccess, the CPU is constantly at 80%+. I am not sure if this is because the CPU is underpowered, or because there is no video card with extra memory (unless the onboard GPU has some).
So, which of the 2 needs updated? GPU or CPU??
Answer #3
which of the 2 needs updated? GPU or CPU??
GPU more than likely, but that Celeron might also be a problem
google “disable video acceleration windows 7” to see hoe to disable video acceleration
heard that might help
what drivers did you install ?
you might be able to install newer drivers using this tool
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php
Answer #4
I installed the latest drivers made for my onboard video card.
I also attempted to disable the video acceleration, but it turns out my video card does not permit settings to be edited, so I physically can not disable it, in fact it doesn’t even state whether it is active…
Any more ideas?
Answer #5
Minecraft actually uses alot of resources.
recommended
CPU 3GHz Dual core
RAM 2GB
GPU AMD 4000 or Nvida equivalent
minimum
CPU 2 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent
RAM 1GB
GPU AMD 3000 or Nvida equivalent
Minecraft is heavy on CPU and not that heay on graphics
Answer #6
I installed the latest drivers made for my onboard video card.
from where ?
did Catalyst Control Center, control panel for ATI/AMD Catalyst drivers, install
minecraft uses OpenGL, which I don’t think is updated in the M$ win update version of the drivers