How can I improve my performance and full-screen video? [10.04]

[Superchiken]

Hi. I have a Gateway Laptop which is dual-booting Windows XP SP3 32-bit and Ubuntu 10.04, also 32-bit. The 64-bit version, would not install on my computer, even though the computer has 64-bit capabilities. It doesn't bother me that I use the 32-bit version, but something it is now doing seems to be affecting the way things work on my laptop.

The computer has 4GB of RAM in it, an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor, and an ATI Radeon X-series graphics card. The monitor has HDMI capabilities. On the Windows side, it handles full-screen programs and operates very quickly. On the Linux side, I can also run things quickly... However, most programs on the Linux side are much slower-running than they would be on the Windows side, and we are talking about the same programs here.

Something I notice when my laptop goes into fullscreen on the Linux side, is that the color quality goes WAYYY down. You can see that it is trying to run in apparently 256 colors, and each individual pixel is very visible. It does not do this on the Windows side. Also, programs that I run on this half of the computer are very laggy, slow, and inefficient. I know that my computer has the video and processing power to handle these programs with ease, but it isn't utilizing all of it.

How can I make Ubuntu run at a higher speed overall, by taking advantage of all four gigs of RAM and this 2.4 GHz Turion processor to run everything like Windows does?

[devils casper]

Have you installed ATI Porprietary Driver in Linux? Check Hardware Drivers option in System - Administration menu.