What makes my laptop bad?

[fireelight]

I'm playing games on a laptop, and I have a problem with FPS lag, even though my PC have decent specs (i guess). If i play like Just Cause 2, i have to turn everything on lowest settings, yet i have 20 fps average. I've looked up the specs on the game and compared to my specs, it looks like my PC can do high end settings with decent fps. The same goes for many other games, for instance Prototype, League of Legends, and even simple games like Worms...

My Specs:
Nvidia GeForce gt 420m
DirectX 11
Intel i5 m560 dual core 2.67ghz
4gb memory
64-bit, windows 7
Any suggestions?

 

[g-unit1111]

Well the first thing I'd suggest would be to update your drivers and make sure that Windows is up to date. I'm guessing this is more a software problem than a hardware problem. If there's still a problem then maybe back up all your data and reinstall Windows. If I had to guess it sounds like a corrupt driver or background program that's slowing things down.

 

[fireelight]

Well the first thing I'd suggest would be to update your drivers and make sure that Windows is up to date. I'm guessing this is more a software problem than a hardware problem. If there's still a problem then maybe back up all your data and reinstall Windows. If I had to guess it sounds like a corrupt driver or background program that's slowing things down.

All my drivers are up to date, i had two updates in windows, but it's now up to date. The updates made no difference whatsoever, so i guess this is more bad than it looks like

 

[Prostar Computer]

Driver updates are not included in Windows updates (sometimes they are but they're still outdated). Have you checked NVidia's site for newer video drivers for your 420M? Also, if your laptop uses Optimus, make sure the game is running off the NVidia card and not the Intel chip. The 560M Intel HD graphics will yield poor performance.

 

[fireelight]

Driver updates are not included in Windows updates (sometimes they are but they're still outdated). Have you checked NVidia's site for newer video drivers for your 420M? Also, if your laptop uses Optimus, make sure the game is running off the NVidia card and not the Intel chip. The 560M Intel HD graphics will yield poor performance.

I've benchmarked the games, and it says that I'm using Nvidia card. I checked for updates on their homepage and updated to 302 to 320.49, lol.. But hey, it makes no difference anyways...

 

[g-unit1111]

Driver updates are not included in Windows updates (sometimes they are but they're still outdated). Have you checked NVidia's site for newer video drivers for your 420M? Also, if your laptop uses Optimus, make sure the game is running off the NVidia card and not the Intel chip. The 560M Intel HD graphics will yield poor performance.

I've benchmarked the games, and it says that I'm using Nvidia card. I checked for updates on their homepage and updated to 302 to 320.49, lol.. But hey, it makes no difference anyways...

What I would do then is go through all the laptop's included software - chances are good that there is a process or some program running in the background of your system that is slowing things down.

 

[Prostar Computer]

Honestly the 420M is not a powerful GPU by any measure, let alone by today's standards. Your CPU and memory is good enough for some of the games you listed though, and you should still get better performance than what you are currently getting.

Which benchmark software did you use? And what was the score?

 

[fireelight]

Honestly the 420M is not a powerful GPU by any measure, let alone by today's standards. Your CPU and memory is good enough for some of the games you listed though, and you should still get better performance than what you are currently getting.

Which benchmark software did you use? And what was the score?

I benchmarked in GTA IV's inbuilt benchmark as well as other games benchmark tools. It said that i used 20% gpu, and 80% or 90% cpu.

 

[Prostar Computer]

Try a benchmark like Unigine Heaven or Furmark. It sounds like your GPU is having an issue with under-utilization.

 

[fireelight]

Try a benchmark like Unigine Heaven or Furmark. It sounds like your GPU is having an issue with under-utilization.

Ok, so i installed Unigine, and came up with these results:

Spoiler

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0

FPS:
6.6
Score:
165
Min FPS:
3.8
Max FPS:
12.6
System

Platform:
Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 560 @ 2.67GHz (2660MHz) x2
GPU model:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M 9.18.13.2049 (1024MB) x1
Settings

Render:
Direct3D11
Mode:
1920x1080 fullscreen
Preset
Custom
Quality
High
Tessellation: Disabled

 

[Prostar Computer]

That seems low. I see scores for that in the 300+ range. Not sure what's causing the under utilization though. You can try uninstalling the driver altogether and then installing the current one; sometimes updating over an existing can make things worse (in an odd twist). Hopefully, the card is not failing on you.