Any way to increase game performance?

I run a 2.20 GHz processor with 286 MB maximum graphic memory. I run Half life 2 on the Steam gaming client. I only run steam and my anti-virus while I play it, and I still have to set everything to low quality. Any programs that could improve performance?

Could you tell us what your gfx card is? You could also boost performance by overclocking your video card, but I wouldn't recommend it if you are inexperienced in that area. There is not much else you can do to boost performance otherwise.

There are some 3th party programs around witch "have" to help people.
I've tested Game Booster but i have to admit i don't feel diffrence b/n with it or not.

Intel Celerons are pretty outdated and so might be your graphics card. I had a celeron that did the same with Half Life 2 Episode 2.. Give me your complete computer specs, CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD. I know what is really needed to play valve games since i play them everyday with different pc's and collect info from benchmarks.

I'm guessing more than likely its a built in graphics adapter (onboard gfx), which would be why the video memory is 256 mb but yet the OP doesn't know the vendor/model. many celerons came with a onboard gfx adapter instead of a dedicated one, I haven't heard of anyone OCing an onboard gpu.

if this system is a laptop, an OC of any kind if unwise. laptops already struggle to stay cool, OC does nothing but give it more heat to deal with. Also that laptop power supplies are purpose-built for the system only, I doubt it can handle much extra load, such as overclocking.

Some of the suggestions here, may help:
Tips on Troubleshooting Game Issues - Windows 7 Forums

Remove software you dont use this free's up MEMORY and CPU usage as well as diskspace which in turn gives you better performance, i usually disable my anti virus if im just going to game then re-enable it once im done playing.