Okay so I have spent so much time in the desktop world, where there is just insane ammounts of performance out of cheap parts.

I bought an E1705, and figured that a 7900GS 256 would be good enough to play games, so I skimped on the rest of the parts, and I have a few questions

My system has:
Dell E1705
Intel core duo 1.8ghz
1gig 533mhz ddr2
7900gs 256mb
120gig 5400RPM

I figured that the video card would be great for playing CSS, but I am scrapping by with 33 FPS on medium settings

Ugh

Okay so can someone with the same video card but more ram and a T7200 or faster tell me that they have good FPS in source games.

are you running vista? Hell, i threw in my vista hard drive into my 1710 because people on the forums were like... NEW DRIVERS FIX VISTA PROBLEMS!>!>!>! well, i updated all the drivers available, and guess what. game play STILL sux.

just like you, under 40fps, and that is when turning stuff down as well.

Annoying. STUPID VISTA

Thats odd...

I can play CS:S on my M1710 at 1920x1200 with max settings and it never drops below 100 FPS.

I have the same GPU, 7900 GS 256 MB and same amount of ram.

The only difference is my CPU is a 2.16 Core 2.

If your running vista I'd say its that. Your machine is more than capable of running smoothly.

Hell I used to manage 70-80 fps on my Gen 2 which had a single core chip and a 6800 Ultra

yeah on medium settings my 9300 in my sig can get > 33fps; you might want to try some different drivers or better yet, make sure the laptop is plugged in and not running the gpu in low power mode

my 1705 had a 7900gs,1.66,1g ram, and i played at around 70+ on avalanche, overclocked of course.

see my sig.

Runs smooth as a babys bottom, never drops below 45.

Scrap vista if ur usin it

Yeah I am running windows XP MCE 2005, all updates, newest drivers from the nvidia site, I am using the upgraded power adaptor, something happened last night, I don;t know what but I started getting excelent fps in CSS, I guess it was user error (oops) but I still think I could get better performance out of a faster hard drive and the T7200

I remember when Idirst got my system. Nothing worked.

Did a fresh install, updated video driver=havent had a glitch in 5 months *crosses finger*

A big problem with Vista that many gamimers don't realize is that when you computer automatically updates with Microsoft, there is a Nvidia driver that overwrite any performance driver you might install.

My FPS kept on dropping from an average of 140's on the CS:S stress test to about 70-80. It took me awhile to realize that the updates kept reinstalling Microsofts driver over mines.

in addition to the above, I would suggest a 7200 RPM Hard drive and 2 Gigs of memory along with a fresh install os XP will get you the max performance

i game just fine with 1 gig i need 2 though, but 1 will still do just takes longer to load up and do some things, also i didnt notice a difference at all when i had a 7200rpm hd and my 5400rpm, im sure theres a diffference but i couldnt tell much at all.

It's Vista... I'm having the same issues. I installed Vista Ulimate a while back and copied over my HL2 and CS:S folders. Of course I updated my 6800 drivers to the latest then overclocked using ATITool. I get frickin 12 fps in CS:S on Militia board when I used to get +70 in XP. I've tried many different drivers, I've tried overclocking and not. I've updated everything, but CS:S gets absolutely shitty performance on my 9300 when I used to get great performance. The only thing I changed was Vista. Well, I'm changing back to XP as soon as I get home. Have been dealing with Vista's crap long enough.

I'll use StyleXP and window blinds to get the eye candy of vista, but I want my games back.

Good luck.

I'm surprised vista is taking a toll on you guys, on my 8800GTS I get 150+ FPS in CS:S

not sure pdonk. i have the same issues with my desktop that i dual boot ALSO with vista ultimate and xp.

Under xp always over 100fps. Vista: 33 or below, though one day it DID magickally go to like 70s for a while. LOL.. It's just annoying, and i have 4gb of ram in BOTH machines.