Could it be possible that your drivers weren’t working properly?
Getting 40fps on Crysis while not being able to run Source games above 10fps screams “driver issue” for me. Upgrading to 7 might fix that, because I know that Win7 Drivers work really well, but really it shouldnt be an issue on vista.
Even several years after release Vista is STILL giving driver issues, lol. Pathetic
Microsoft pulled a “Millennium Edition” with Vista and 7, eh? 
You do know that crysis requires more drivers than source games, the only problem is that most source games use the CPU quite alot, my netbook can’t play any source games but I can play GTA san andreas or NFS underground 2 just fine.
Did you try disabling aero glass? You can do that without using the classic theme, it’s really not so bad.
…I almost stopped reading at that. Maybe you wanna rephrase yourself?
And don’t say it cant play any source game if you can play San Andreas. Ever try CSS, even at lowest settings? Half-life Source? I’m sure you can even play HL2 with tuned-down graphics settings.
By far one of the weirdest things people do whilst drunk, and I’ve seen quite the amount of drunks.
San andreas medium settings 800x600 = 25fps average
CS S on de_dust 15players 640x480 with speed tweaks (r_3dskybox 0 dxlevel 70 disabled decals and sprays etc) = 5fps
CS S on de_dust2 or cs_office with ~30 people(my usual server) = <1fps
And it’s not a hardware problem, maps with no lighting and nothing but dev textures (gungame maps) work pretty well sometimes I get over 30fps.
Then you must have some seriously outdated drivers.
Yeah only the latest ones, and I’ve tried at least 5 operating systems on it.
The only thing that made a difference is overclocking it to 1.8ghz from 1.6 but it’s a hit or miss when I change the frequency there’s 50% chance of crash, if it doesn’t crash at first it’s all good.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.