My lap top is great but the graphics card sucks!

I have an averatec 3200
DVD +/- Burner
Athlon XP-M 2200+
XP Pro (it came with home)
512 DDR 333
60 GB Hard Drive
Wireless 802.11g
12.1 XGA lcd
1" Thin and 4.3 lb

All for $900.00

It more than exceedes the minimun requirements for counter strike source. I can open the game, but if I try to load any levels, the game crashes. THe graphics card is a Via/SG3 Unichrome card, which shares memory with my system, I can share 8, 16, 32, or 64 MB. Is there anyway to play newer games on this machine, with the grahpics turned all the way down? I know nothing about this card

looks like you got a laptop designed to be thin and portable rather than a powerhouse. with laptops you most of the time eigther have to compromize one or the other.

try turning down 3d accelerations a notch or two...

in counterstrike source i'm pretty sure that you can manually disable specific effects using the commandconsole... advanced pixelshaders can some times be too much for certian graphics cards to handle...

You might not be able to get that to work.. if you look at the third post of this thread http://tinyurl.com/643qc and the last post here.http://tinyurl.com/3r6ql If you update your drivers it might help, but it also might not, that card just isn't any good for 3d applications unfortunately, intel's integrated graphics, though crappy, are better.
Here is a list of games this person managed to get working enough to be "playable". http://tinyurl.com/527s9

Drivers: http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2 choose xp->integrated-> your chipset is a kn400/km400

i have the same problem with my laptop
i think im worse off, i got "intel extreme 2" graphics
but i only paid 800 bucks for my centrino

just imagine how much more heat output wou would have with an ATI or nvidia card