A question about FPS and my vid card

[Help me Thanks]

Hi. I have a question and I've tried searching these forums for an answer but I couldn't find one so here I am asking away.

I recently got a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. I've installed the ATI Catalyst drivers and it is running well. However I don't seem to get 100 fps with balanced settings on OpenGL while I'm playing Half-life: Counter-Strike.

I know 100 fps is no big deal and it's not that much different from 60 or 70 fps, but please hear me out.

I asked a friend why this was so and he told me to check my refresh rate. It was at 60 so I changed it to 75 (the maximum refresh rate my monitor can handle). My friend explained that my monitor is probably the reason that I cannot get 100 fps on Counter-Strike since my refresh rate only goes up to 75.

So I believed what he said and continued to play without caring too much about my fps. However, one week I went to another friend's house and saw that he had the SAME EXACT monitor as me but a different video card.

This friend has the ATI Radeon 8500 LE and he gets 100 fps consistently during both LAN and Internet play. He also uses his video card with balanced settings and he has the same monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 753DF).

Why does my friend get better fps than me when he has a older model? Could it possibly be that his 8500 outperforms my 9600?

I know it's a long read and I'm sorry but I've tried to be as clear as possible. I would appreciate it if any of you can help out.

[hav0c]

look for an option in your drivers settings called "v-sync" this will limit your fps to your monitors refresh rate, disable it. Also make sure you have half-life set to go above a certain FPS in the HL console type "fps_max 100".

[Help me Thanks]

Thanks for the help! Disabling V-sync gives me 100 fps now.