Expecting too much out of my XPS 15?

I loaded Heroes of Might and Magic 5 on my XPS15 a few days ago, and was surprised at how laggy it is, especially on the menu screens when resolution is set to 1080p. It's a pain in the butt to move the cursor arou. I have the i5, 6GB RAM, and the 1GB video card w/Optimus. Does that sound right? This wasn't meant to primarily be a gaming computer, but that game has been out for at least a couple of years, so I wasn't expecting that. It's the only game I've tried thus far.

Also, how often should the cooling fan crank up? I seem to hear it rev up every 30-45 seconds during normal web browsing.

 

First of all you cant play all your games in full hd 1080p resolution try a lower resolution
with medium settings
and which graphics card you have?
i suppose which ever you have that is 420 or 435 both
are good for gaming in medium detail
not high or ultra details
it also depends on the game you are playing
as far as i know it will play most of the
games in medium settings
hope so

 

Best way to get those gpu working good is to stick to 720p (1280x720) with medium-to-high details without AA or AF maxed out.
These cards cant keep up with recent games decently at 1080p, simply theres not enough power under the hood mate.

 

As stated, don't expect the GT420M to play all games on high setting.

But that being said, have you updated the drivers?

 

I've played "Crysis Warhead" in High with a lower res and "Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars" in Ultra+1080p with the same specc as you.....well with 4gb of ram, I would update your drivers

 

Hi, I'm new here and was wondering the same thing as the op. I tried to play black ops on low settings, oc'd the 420, did whatever I could to stop the complete lagginess of the game with no success. I even made a rule to turn the card on to make sure it was even working. I have 720p screen, i560 & GT420M, 8GB Corsair ram and 128GB Corsair SSD. Does anyone think there is something wrong with my system?

 

Because Black Ops for the pc is a poorly ported game as it was meant for PS3/xbox 360, performance will always be an issue unless you have a top of the line desktop system.

 

strange, according to

NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

the 420m should be able to handle black ops well on low and can be acceptable on high.

 

Thanks for the advice. Is it best to use the drivers from Dell or Nvidia? Nvidia's seem to be a little newer than one one on Dell's site.

 

That's why I'm wondering if something was wrong. They used almost the exact specs as me and it played decent for them. I am in the process of installing the latest drivers from nvidia. Before, I was using dell's latest driver. I will report back on if there is any difference.

 

Correct, Black Ops is pretty badly coded for PC. My i7 rig lags on high settings @ 1080p, though now it's mostly network lag.

I would try Nvidia's official ForceWare drivers.

 

Okay, just installed the latest Nvidia drivers and WOW, what a difference. Plays just as smooth as my ps3. I am oc'd to 720/960, so that may make a difference, but even oc'd on dell's drivers was complete lag. So, go to nvidia's site and download the latest driver. Big difference.

 

I just installed the latest Nvidia driver, and my performance rating went from 4.6 to 4.4

Maybe I'll try the Dell one and see how that works. Regarding the game, I bumped down the resolution and that helped.

 

I just checked my WEI and my "graphics" stayed the same at 4.5, but my "gaming graphics" went up from 6.5 to 6.7

You theoretically shouldn't see a movement in the "graphics" part as I don't think it uses the GT 420M for that part. Only during gaming, hence the big difference in the scores.

WEI isn't a true benchmark anyways. I instantly could tell a difference in black ops once I installed the nvidia drivers.