Hardware in comparison to game performance(A little confused)

[zombiedan51190]

Hi guys,

I bought a new laptop about a week ago, and I've been doing some light gaming on it. Nothing to intense, I already know not to expect wonders out of laptops when is comes to gaming. Usually though, if I find my laptop meets a games recommended specifications, I feel pretty comfortable purchasing said game.(I use CanIRunIT, I know its not the most accurate, but it gives me a general idea of where my hardware falls). I purchased ARMA: Gold edition a few days ago off of Steam, and can play the game pretty well without any trouble, but I had thought that my laptop may be able to run it better then the settings I have it at now. Currently, I have the game set at 800 x 600 resolution running it on Normal video settings. Now the default button sets my laptops video setting to Normal, with a resolution of 1024 x 768. I find that even at those settings, my laptop hangs when running through foliage or using a sniper scope(usually knocks down from about 32 fps to maybe 18-15 fps) If I keep the same video settings but knock down the resolution to 800 x 600 the game runs flawlessly. This is also the case if I bump the video settings up to high, but keep the resolution the same. Lastly, if I set the resolution to my laptops native resolution of 1366 x 768 I can also run the game pretty smoothly, but at Low settings(anything above that starts to get choppy), I have no problem playing the game like this, I'm not a picky gamer. However, as I said earlier, my hardware in comparison to what the games recommended specifications require seems more than adequate, so I'm little confused on why I can't run the game at higher settings without such a dip in performance. It's is very possible that my misunderstanding of the hardware gap between desktops and laptops has led me to believe my laptop is more powerful than is actually is, but anyway here's the most important part....

SPECS:
Intel Core i7 4500u @ 1.80 Ghz
8 GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 740m
Running Windows 8.1

All drivers are up to date, and everything. Any input is appreciated, and thanks for taking the time to read my novel.

 

[zombiedan51190]

I booted into my bios, and I actually can, and have allocated more memory usage for my graphics chip. It is is set at 512M now, and I can reduce it in increments of 1/2. So; 64M beings the lowest, 128M, 256M, and where I'm at currently. I assume higher is better when it comes to gaming performance, but good chance I'm mistaken. Is it my GPU that is affecting my performance? If anything I would have assumed my CPU. In my research of my computer components everyone seems to rag on i7 4500u because its low power restrictions, and not actually being as powerful as i5 quads in the same generation. I've seen people actually playing some pretty demanding games using the GT 740m(Assassin's Creed: Black Flag being one example. According to systemrequirementslab, I dont even meet the minimum specifications ). Maybe I'm trying to get blood from a stone, and I should just work with what I got.