Very low framerate on pc games

[JPerrault]

Ok, so I recently bought a laptop and I want to run games on it. It has an i5 2.5 ghz CPU and the nvidia 640m le for graphics. It also has 6gb ram. Now I recognize these are far from the best specs for gaming but I keep getting frame rates from 5-16 fps on a game I should meet the requirements for (spec ops the line) even on low settings. Anyone know what I can do to improve my computers performance?

P.s I have tried other games with the same results. Also some tech guy at best buy managed to get it running at almost 40 fps by "optimizing it" but didn't give me specifics on how to actually do that. It went back to low framerates after being restarted.

 

[simon12]

Check power saving options are set for maximum performance and try lowering game settings.

 

[PaulSouter]

http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GT+640M+LE/games

 

[PaulSouter]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-640M-LE.72199.0.html

 

[AntiZig]

Hello,
the biggest question for you would be what game are you trying to run and at what settings?

Keep in mind that even if that laptop has a Full HD screen (1920x1080) it won't be able to run games well at that resolution, so change resolution to smaller one that still matches the aspect ratio.

Monitor your temperatures. This is a number one thing you should do when gaming on a laptop. Due to limited cooling capabilities they tend to get hot quite fast, if it gets too hot your performance will degrade. (programs to monitor: hwmonitor, hwinfo, msi afterburner)

Check the settings in-game, turn off post processing like Anti-aliasing, Ambient Occlusion, etc. AA especially, oftentimes incurs a big workload on your graphics card, especially at high resolutions.

Make sure to update your drivers to latest stable from nvidia website.

And generally don't expect too much from this laptop, medium settings at 1366x768 resolution seems to be the sweet spot for it, performance wise.

Interesting thing, LE is a downclocked version of 640M. Do some research around the web, it might be reasonable to overclock your GPU to same frequency as regular 640M if your cooling system can handle it.

 

[JPerrault]

First off, thanks I appreciate everyones help. And so far I have tried to run sniper elite v2 and Spec ops the line at low and very low settings, with a resolution of 1366x768 and the frame rate generally stays under 20 fps. My power saving settings are set for high performance and the only other programs that run while the games are up are steam and fraps.

 

[AntiZig]

oh one more thing, since this is a laptop, it probably has nvidia optimus on it, make sure that software is updated as well as intel HD drivers. Check that optimus is configured to use the dedicated GPU for video games instead of intel HD

 

[HEXiT]

the 640 le is a seriously gimped 640m it wont play high end games at all well you will be looking at 15 fps on a game like bf3 so my guess is your getting what you should if your running the games on high or medium instead of low...
sorry m8 who ever told you that the gfx would play games lied to you.

antzig its not only downclocked its also had some cores disabled basically its a reclaimed 640 gfx chip that has been binned because it has failed the full core count but used anyway in oem's as it is still usable as basic gfx
if you look at the nvidia site they have a little gem on there which says UPTO 384 cores which means exactly that it may have 250 working cores or it may have 384 they just make sure it passes a certain threshold and lable it LE... and ship it out.
the 640m is listed as having exactly 384 cores... and thats the difference in performance not just the down clock.

 

[JPerrault]

Yeah thanks but I just managed to fix it. The fan on my laptop was set to balance ventilation and silence and my pc would get too hot and start using the integrated card instead of the dedicated one. And HEXiT although you are right about the card being a lot weaker than the 640m, it still seems to manage most games at medium or high settings at around 40-50 fps, although I imagine if I want to play bf3 i will have to go down to low settings.

 

[HEXiT]

good. glad you managed yourself. its the best way to learn what a system is doing by debugging and fixing it.
its potentially a lot weaker not absolute. it may be as much as 20% off a stock 460m or it could be as little as 5% running gpu-z should tell you how many active cores you have. so that would give you an idea of how to compare both models.

 

[AntiZig]

@hexit, I see why it's so much weaker in benchmarks than a normal 640. Good to know, thanks. But, it should still be possible to OC it, no?

 

[Sunius]

Normal 640 is a desktop card, not a laptop card. Given that the tech guy was able to do something about it, it tells me that you may be running something in the background. Could you open up the game that lags, wait for it to start lagging, then minimize it, and take a screen of processes tab of task manager sorted by user name?