Graphics freeze on Inspiron 15R i5

For less than a week I've had my new Insirpon 15R 5537 with a 4th gen i5 processor and 6gb of ram (touchscreen). I haven't done much with it yet, but when I play Farmville 2 on Facebook, it very frequently and noticably lags and freezes (this is the only game I really have tried to play, I'm not a big gamer but I do get hooked on facebook games at times). My 4-year old Studio doesn't lag, so the new laptop sure shouldn't.

Any ideas on what to do? I hate to have to call dell about it, as I had a hellish problem that took hours and hours on the phone with dell cs last weekend because a warranty I ordered with the system, and was charged for, did not show up on the order and no one could figure out how to get it on there (most of them couldn't even find the damn warranty with the purchase, but one person finally did --- but said I still couldn't use the warranty because it didn't attach to the order). They finally sorted it through a very drawn-out process. Anyhow, I just want to get graphics working properly, or send the thing back. And wish I would've tried it out and found out it's crappy before I spent hours of phone and much stress sorting out the warranty issue!

 

Is it the same on different browsers? Try running it on Firefox, Internet Exporer, Chrome at least 2 different browsers.

Second check would be to see if this still happens when running at high performance power plan. If you click on your battery, you can see more power options and then select high performance.

 

Thanks for the ideas, I have only tried it on Firefox so far and haven't messed with the power plan. I've barely used the thing, to be honest, because once I saw how the graphics were I didn't want to start loading software etc if I would have to return it (using my loved old Studio right now). I'll try what you suggested, thanks again.

 

I have tried running it on Chrome, and it still does a bit of freezing, as it does in Firefox (at first I thought it wasn't, but then it started up). I did check the battery, it was already set on high performance. Any ideas?

Plus, the laptop runs hot to touch on the bottom.

 

Sorry for a late replay, i was on holiday. I believe your problem might be overheating. If you are on Windows 8/8.1 you can easily check if you cpu is underclocking:
Just open the task manager (right click on the taskbar-task manager) and click more details, then performance and processor. Check is the speed of CPU and model (i5 4xxx) and you could post both here. Dust can clog the fan grill area quite quickly sometimes.