Dell Latitude performance questions

Hey there!

A few months back, I picked up an HP laptop.
For basically everything else I do, the thing works like a charm. It handles my daily grind without breaking a sweat. But here’s where the headache starts: I recently tried downloading a few games just to see how they'd run—stuff like Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, Spec Ops, and things in that vein.
The issue is, this machine can barely even crawl through them, let alone actually play them. Even if I crank the settings down to low or drop the resolution to the floor, it’s still a struggle. I even tried throwing some older titles from back in 2010 at it.
Look, I get it—this isn't exactly a high-end gaming rig, but it should at least be able to handle stuff on medium settings. Based on the reviews I read for this specific model, it was supposed to be able to run newer titles like Battlefield 4 or FIFA 15 pretty decently.

I went through the motions and installed all the drivers straight from the official site, making sure I had the latest updates installed.

But when I ran a system checker tool to see if my hardware could actually handle these games, the software reported that my graphics card only has 64 MB of memory???

That makes zero sense because the dedicated graphics are actually decent; yeah, it's integrated, but it's rated for 2 GB. So how on earth am I seeing 64 MB??

I've been digging through some US forums, and it looks like I'm not alone. A ton of people have run into this exact same wall where their games perform like garbage despite what the specs say they should be doing.
Some folks are saying that the Intel graphics won't hand over the reins to the dedicated chip when a game calls for it, so the system just stubbornly sticks to the basic integrated graphics.

And that's exactly where I'm stuck. Do I need to hunt down some specific drivers, or am I going to have to dive into the BIOS and start messing with settings? Honestly, I'm a bit out of my depth here.

Here are the specs for the laptop:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-ProB....132353.0.html

If anyone has any advice or knows what's going on, I'd really appreciate the help.

Yeah, in theory, that’s exactly how it should work—when you aren't doing anything intensive, the laptop stays on the integrated graphics from the processor, and then once you launch something more demanding—like a game in your case—the dedicated GPU should kick in (assuming the hardware is actually there). Have you gone ahead and installed the Intel drivers yet? You might also want to peek into your BIOS to see if there's an option to set the primary graphics to the dedicated card.

Thanks for the input.

I’ve been digging through the web myself, and I actually stumbled upon some guy mentioning the exact same thing—that you really need to get those Intel drivers and DirectX installed for everything to play nice.
The laptop is supposed to have a GeForce MX series with 2 GB of DDR3, but right now, Device Manager is just showing me that basic Intel HD Graphics chip, and it looks like only those drivers are actually active.
I’m going to try installing the dedicated drivers and see if I can toggle the other GPU on in the BIOS, assuming there’s even an option to do that. Fingers crossed this actually fixes the headache.

If you haven't installed those Intel drivers yet, you really should get on that—it’s kind of a game changer. Once they're actually active, everything starts running completely differently.