GT540M quick question

I've recently bought xps 15 l502x with 2gb gt540m. full hd resolution.

Why am I not able get full fps when playing warcraft 3. I usually get around 50+ fps (max = 60 fps) and thats after i lower my game resolution to 1366x 768. It even drops to 45+ when there's intense graphic going on. My friend has an ASUS with gt540m on board and he has no problem attaining 60fps all the time. Why is that so? considering war3 is a 10 years old game.

even when i play starcraft 2, my fps are 35+ and drops to below 10 when there's intense fight whereas my friend's 2 years old laptop, forgot what his card is, gt1xxm handles it perfectly fine. I am on same settings as he is. medium mostly and 1280x800 resolution.

I've tried different drivers. To no avail. I notice only the graphic bios is slightly different, rest are the same with my friend's gt540m. I even did clean installation twice, still same problem exists. Help pls.

 

is it running on the 540 providing you have optimus? if you dont know i'd imagine its not using the 540 but the integrated intel card. You'll probably have to whitelist the game in the nvidia control panel.

 

what cpu does your friend have? I know that warcraft 3 isn't graphics intensive and starcraft 2 relies relies heavily on the CPU.

try downloaded GPU-Z: techPowerUp! :: Downloads

select your video card (540m) and then on the sensors tab, check "continue refreshing this screen while GPU-Z is in the background"

Then run your games and every now and then check the GPU load. If it is below 80-90%, then it means that your graphics card is not working at its full capacity and that there is a bottleneck somewhere. in this case, it is most likely a cpu bottleneck.


To help alleviate this problem...you can try:

turning down some specific settings that rely mostly on CPU. In SC2, read the video settings descriptions and some will say "this setting relies on the CPU". I think some settings are Reflections, effects and physics. just turn those way down.

also, i know this might seem counter-intuitive and I have no idea why it would work like this but sometimes raising the video settings (to make your video card work harder) will improve FPS.

Oh and like Sam_A_1992 said, make sure that you're not using your integrated card to play.

 

Solved.

it's on nvidia gpu i know how to identify when it's running on intel or nvidia.

The problem is with the power plan. I was on battery saver, change it to balanced and problem is fixed. Wanted to reduce fan noise in the first place so i changed it to battery saver. but i couldnt care about the noise if the game isnt running at full fps.