Poor performance in Company of Heroes (not CoH 2)

Clevo w230st
Win8
i7-4800MQ
GTX 765M
16GB RAM
Plexor M5M mSATA SSDs

I'm trying to run Company of Heroes Blitzkrieg mod - this game is from 2006. I feel like it should be smooth as butter, even with 7 expert CPU armies on a huge map, and it's not. I'm on AC power, with Windows and Hotkey (manufacturer software) both set to performance mode. The game is set to run on the dGPU in nVidia control panel, and it does. I'm 99.9% sure the GPU isn't the problem. Resolution and GPU options such as shaders, textures, etc have just about zero effect on fps. My 4800MQ is undervolted -75mV, but otherwise stock. It's not hitting TDP during CoH (typically 35-40w), and it's clocking up to 3600+MHz. It's also never getting above 85C, so it's not thermal throttling. Total CPU load never gets much past 40%, but I can see several individual threads that are hitting 100% (possibly simultaneously, not sure). It seems like the hardware is running as it should. I have every single in-game setting low or off (including audio), and the resolution down at 1280x720. It's showing I'm at 40-60fps, but everything is really... herky-jerky. Scrolling, unit movements, animations, everything. It looks like it's running at 15fps once the game gets going and more units are created. I realize this game probably isn't that well optimized for quads, but this is just crazy. Are my expectations for this CPU too high? Is the game just poorly written? I tried XP compatibility mode, but it didn't make a difference. Am I missing something? This is a brand new Windows install on a brand new machine.

 

I run COH on my i7 2600K Geforce 570 HD desktop at 2560 x 1600 max everything except medium shadows and trees no antialiasing and it plays good.

I don't game on laptops but I'm very surprised it doesn't run well on your laptop.

 

I discovered today that it's the mod. I can play vanilla (first time I ever tried that) on max everything with 7 CPU armies on a huge map and it's fine. In the mod I can set everything to max (except DX10 doesn't work for whatever reason) and it runs fine with only 4 CPU armies. Once I add more, it really begins to struggle. It has something to do with the ai strategy or path finding or something, which is too bad, since the mod really kicks the crap out of vanilla CoH.