Inspiron 1525 poor video performance

Hi there i have owned an inspiron 1525 for a few weeks and am disappointed by the video performance and am wondering what i can do to  improve it. I must state at this poin that i am not talkig about playing games on this system as i am aware that i would be awful!!

 

I have 2gb ram installed and a dual core processor with vista home premium and an integrated gfx card (Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset - GMA X3100). I have all the graphics options turned off and windows runs in "classic" form so all the effects are off for aero etc. The performance is set to "maximum perforance" and its always running from the mains, not battery. The laptop gets, i believe 3.1 on the windows rating thing! does this sound about right?

 

under the graphics options i can see the following:

 

minimum gfx memory 8mb

maximum gfx memory 358mb

gfx memory in use 132mb

 

so does this mean i can increase the amount of ram the gfx card uses from the system ram? because i have been looking and looking for ages and i cannot find an option to allow me to do this.

 

I have checked the driver and windows tells me i have the best driver available.

 

basically when i want to watch a movie (in either avi, mp4, wmv format) the playback is very juddery and unwatchable.  i could understand this if maybe i was running another program or somethiing in the back ground but there is nothing else on the go. trying to watch something through itunes is even worse. its totally unwatchable!

 

I did a clean install of vista the other day and hope that by starting from scratch without all the dell bloatware etc it might run better but its just as bad. i only have half a dozen programs installed and have checked all the drivers and they are all fine.

 

can anyone please advise if this is normal performance because if it is, i am very disappointed. as it is the speakers are far too quiet, but if i can at least sode the video issue out i'll be happy!

 

i also have a battered old inspiron 6400 and my 1525 is actually worse in terms of video performance, sound and overall system performance depsite both having dual core processor and the same operating system. the 6400 even has less ram but still runs slower (only 1gb installed!!).

 

can anyone please help me with some suggestions as i'm fairly fed up not being able to watch films, unless of course they are dvds, but most of my films are not dvd's!!!

 

please help!!!