Problem with performance on my M15X.

So at this point, my M15X is fairly old, I got it around September of 2010. It's got a i7-740QM, ATI Mobility Radeon 5850, 6GB Ram, etc. I've never really had stellar performance, even from when I first purchased it, but it's but good enough that I haven't complained. Recently, however, games that have ran fine for quite a while are running very poorly. For example, League of Legends (which shouldn't be difficult to run at all) used to play at a constant 60 fps. For about the past 6 month, however, it won't go above about 25. This has nothing to do with my internet connection, as my ping is always quite low. Far Cry 3, for a higher powered example, I was able to run on medium settings at about 30 fps and low settings at ~40 around Christmas. I tried to boot it up a few weeks ago, however, and on the absolute lowest settings, I was getting no higher than 5 fps.

I recently cleaned out my fans, but it hasn't helped the problem. Note that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about computers, so I'm pretty iffy on manipulating bios/overclocking or anything like that. Any help? I'm just looking to get my previous level of performance back.

 

Try updating your Nvidia drivers. If you ready have the latest, try rolling back to precious versions such as 310.2 as an example.

Other than that it could be background processes that are slowing down your machine. Try to remove programmes and processes you don't need anymore.

Could also be hardware related. Might be time to upgrade the gpu.

EDIT: Also download alien autopsy and run a full system checkup http://content.dellsupportcenter.com/updates/aulauncher.exe

 

I tried updating my drivers using Windows built-in driver detection. I was on a driver from 2011 apparently, but after the update, it says it's from 2009. I don't know why it apparently went to an old driver. I then used AMD's driver detector, and it found and downloaded something, but i have no idea where that something is or what to do with it. I did try Far Cry 3 after these downloads; nothing has changed. I would imagine I'm doing something wrong?

I downloaded Alien Autopsy and did a "checkup." My system failed the SMART Short Self Test, the SMART Extended Self Test, and the Targeted Read Test on my HDD. Everything else passed. Don't really know what those failures mean or if they may have to do with what is impacting my performance.

 

Your hard drive is failing a requires a new one. I would start backing all your information up now before it actually does die on you.

Also, did you go here to update the drivers for your video card? AMD Graphics Drivers & Software

 

I would also suggest replacing the drive.