New laptop performing worse than expected with regard to games

I've looked around the forums here already, as well as done some Google searching, but I still have some questions. While I spend a decent amount of time playing computer games (usually in burst, then I lay off for awhile, but that's beside the point) I'm still rather ignorant on many of the more advanced aspects of PCs and PC gaming, which may be part of my problem.

I recently got an HP Livestrong l2000 laptop. Here are the specs, if I leave anything out let me know and I'll try my best to find it.

AMD Turion 64 ML-37 (2.0 GHz/1MB L2 Cache)
ATI Radeon Xpress 200m w/productivity ports
2x512MB DDR SDRAM
80 GB 5400 RPM HD
14.0 WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x768)

Because of my video card, I really only have 896 MB of ram free. I'm thinking I might go ahead and upgrade to 2 GB soon.
While I am, overall, happy with the laptop, it seems like its performance isn't as good as it should be when it comes to games. Now, I'm not expecting to turn the graphics all the way up on anything (except BF 1942) but I think I should be able to do a little more than I can.

I installed the Battlefield 2 demo, and was getting about 15 or 16 FPS at 800 x 600 with all settings at their lowest, and the view scale at 59 %. I installed Omega drivers, and now I'm getting a whopping 19-20 fps. I installed Oblivion and it was so choppy as to be unplayable. I've seen people with similar systems claiming to run both games just fine.

I installed Far Cry, which has lower minimum specs, and am running very poorly on minimum settings. My desktop, an Emachines with an Athlon 2200+ (1.8 GHz), 512 MB ram, and a GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8x runs it better.

Dawn of War, which has higher minimum specs, runs fine with all graphic settings maxed out and corpses staying onscreen for a while. Although I've only played single player skirmish so far.

Battlefield Vietnam is also disappointing. With 800 x 600 resolution and all graphic options down, I was getting about 25-35 FPS online. I'll try single player later and see how that's doing, but if I remember it wasn't really any better.

I could be wrong, as I've already stated my understanding of the more advanced aspects of PCs and gaming is rather limited, but shouldn't exceeding the minimum specs for a game allow you to run it decently at minimum settings? If anyone can help me out, or point me towards a solution it would be greatly appreciated. Or just tell me if I'm wrong about this.

 

This card is integrated, not dedicated. You need a dedicated card with more power than this card. Refer to the Graphics card comparison chart in the gaming forums.

 

If only I could upgrade it.

I just realized that I double posted, I apologize for that. I got an error message and though that the first post didn't take, apparently it did. Sorry about that.

 

Yeah, without a better GPU, you can forget gaming for the most part. That is NOT a gaming rig by any means. 2 gigs of ram will definitely help you though. Still won't be amazing, but you will see a difference