I'm afraid not...
VALVe made steam work in such a way that a key can only be registered once, in order to prevent you from say, installing your copy of the game on all your friends' PC's.
Well, I'm not sure but it might have something to do with your monitor's current refresh-rate. If it's set to 70Hz, and you have Vsync on, it could be preventing the game from going over 70 FPS.
Try making your refresh-rate higher or canceling Vsync.
That's my opinion...
Help me!!!!!!
First my specs:
P4 1.6
256 MB DDR Ram
Gainward 5900XT 128 MB
Now, about directx 9 effects...
I know that my card supports it, i know that the defaults were made by valve so that this card will run in 8.1 for performance reasons, i know that you need to put -dxlevel 90 in...