Basically with a solid GeForce 4 series card you could already cap the 100 fps framerate on Half-Life, but update to a much more powerful 9600 pro and framerate would start getting much more lower. The Quake 1 engine would be so old that getting better GPUs would make it run worse.
Also, another fun fact about HL is that scaled massively on ram frequencies. You would get a higher boost in framerate by overclocking your ram than your cpu or gpu.
It was only in late 2000s and the era of much more powerful 6th series that solid 100 fps on counter strike 1.6 were a given.
I miss that era of the internet, when socializing on irc and public servers was the norm, players controlled the servers rather than companies. Today we have replaced all of this infrastructure with ease of use and queue buttons and playing online leads to barely beyond any meaningful and short lived interaction.