What benchmark Program to use??

Hi guys,, havent been on for awhile but wondering if someone can possibly help me out.

I have been playing Empire Total War and Im not sure if the problem I have been having is the game or my system.

Basically game starts fine on Very High Settings and runs smooth. However after a good bit into my game campaign I noticed some lag, first on the campaign map then in battles too , which evevntually started to cause the game to crash. Usually it was after several hours of gameplay so I thought It might have been a memory leak issue

Someone on a game forum advised me to turn down the settings a bit, which I did and again everything was fine ( for a while)

After another time into the game it started again. Im now down to playing on Medium settings. And the time it takes to process between turns is also getting longer.

I was chatting to Dell Alienware Tech support and they suggested that I DL a program called 3D MARK BENCHMARK

When I looked it up on Google I have found some website called FutureMark that has several differennt versions.

So what is the one to use? I see there is a basic FREE version ,, will that be enough to see if my Hardware is all running as it should be??

I have tested my Temps and they all come up with good results,,, besides if it was my GPU why play ok to begin with?? Im wondering though if this is a memory leak problem.

When i tested the game spec on can I run it.com,, it didnt fully pass as the game was made prior to Windows 7,, so thats a possiblility.

The game is fairly Old so my system should otherwise play it fine ????

Thing is I havent had the laptop that long and dont have that many games yet to compare. Footie Mgr runs fine (pauses sometimes during matches, but did that on my old laptop too so probably the game)

Crysis sometimes pauses also for a sec or two , but again I have probs with that disc not always being recognised so that might just be that disc.

As this is my first time with a Gaming Laptop coming from years with PS3,,,I would like to know if there is any other issues and be able to know how to monitor my system to get the best out of it ,, and you guys always seem to know the score.

Cheers for any help or advice

SYSTEM SPEC

M15X
INTEL i7 740QM
NVIDIA 460M GPU
500 GB HD
4 GIG RAM

 

I do not no if you have looked here.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-powerful-m15x-benchmark-thread-part-2-a.html

 

I'd guess it was heat. Most of my problems over the decades has been heat related. Blow the machine out with some compressed air, elevate it slightly above whatever surface it's on to increase air flow.

 

Not heat ,, as It did it as soon as laptop switched on at times,, laptop only couple months old and sits elavated with the bigger Bat on a laptop stand.

Did heat tests and they where fine too