hey my brother has a dell pc (not new aabout 2 and a half years old) p4 1.28ghz 256 sdram and a 9800 ati pro. its sad to say that he gets about 25-40 fps in counter strike which is not really a new game that requires a top end card like a 9800 to get good fps. Most cards can go over 100 fps with good teaking. i have a pny 5200 fx and i get well over 159 fps. So what could be the problem? can you guys maybe tell me what i should turn on and off in his vid card settings? vsync is obviously off.

are you in Open GL mode in Counter-Strike? try setting fps_max 101 in console. Maybe its possible that your processor or ram is bottle necking the performance of your card, but I highly doubt that could be the case.

DEFINATELY the ram. my computer, a winXP has 386 ram and CS plays on it using about 370MB w/ all of my other running processes, and i know whats on my comp. i suggest 512RAM for any comp, but if you cant do that, 386 would work like what i use. i doubt its the processor since my friend has a pentium 3 i ghz processor and plays just fine a couple things you could fix... make it so your fps_max = your screen refresh rate. getting 159 fps doesnt do a thing compared to 60 (assuming your screen refresh rate was 60) except for take up more energy, make your system hotter, and wear your parts out faster FBI_Agent

Both the ram and cpu. My brothers P3 733mhz gets about 25-40 fps too only sometimes though. Abit IS7 865PE Pentium 4 2.6ghz @ 3.2ghz eVGA GeForce FX 5900 SE

cs is old though, i think the most it would need is about 600-800Mhz. im sure 1000Mhz would be just fine on the cpu FBI_Agent