Laptop Freezes and Struggles When Gaming

[Helicity]

I have a 2012 Dell XPS 15 laptop and it's recently been having troubles when playing games (mainly League of Legends). The performance is fine when there isn't a lot of "action" happening on the screen but when a teamfight occurs my FPS drops and the laptop either freeze-lags or freezes completely. It also makes a very loud buzzing sound (this sound is not mechanical). I run my games at the lowest settings possible to try to ease the workload.

I have tried cleaning up my laptop as best as possible by uninstalling unnecessary programs and deleting old files. I have also run virus and malware scans. Is my laptop just getting old and worn out or is there some way I can fix this issue?

I will be building a PC in a few months but I would like to be able to still use my laptop.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Milheim]

So you're only experiencing these issues recently? Has something changed on the laptop? Check your power settings in the Control Panel to make sure you're on the "High Performance" setting. Verify any graphics drivers that you have. Are you keeping the laptop plugged in while playing? I'd suggest connecting to the internet wired vs. wirelessly as network connectivity can cause issues as well.

 

[Helicity]

So you're only experiencing these issues recently? Has something changed on the laptop? Check your power settings in the Control Panel to make sure you're on the "High Performance" setting. Verify any graphics drivers that you have. Are you keeping the laptop plugged in while playing? I'd suggest connecting to the internet wired vs. wirelessly as network connectivity can cause issues as well.

I been experiencing issues for about the last 2 months. Nothing that I know of has changed on my laptop and I am on the "High Performance" setting. I'm not completely sure about my graphics drivers. I tried seeing if my graphics drivers needed an update but apparently they did not. I also have my laptop plugged into the power supply and am wired to my router.

 

[Milheim]

Have you tried an older version of the graphics driver?