My laptop isn't using its full processing power?

[ferur0910]

I have an Acer Aspire laptop, and I enjoy playing old games. I play Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Counter-Strike, etc. However, even on a very recent laptop, the games lag a noticeable amount. Nothing I can't ignore on most games, on Half-Life 2 it's only slight. Team Fortress 2, though, is almost unplayable. When I go to the System Requirements Lab website, their "Can you Run It" tool tells me my laptop greatly exceeds the recommended specs required to play, yet I still get lag on medium graphics. This wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the fact that my brother has a Dell laptop with specs that are equal or lower to my laptop on all accounts, but his laptop plays every one of these games on medium to high graphics perfectly, with absolutely no lag. I use Game Booster, but it doesn't seem to help very much. I always make sure unnecessary programs are closed when playing, only so much as Avast antivirus running in the background. Why is my laptop not running these games as well?

Specs for my laptop:
Processor--Pentium Dual-Core CPU T4500 2.3GHz
RAM--4 GB
System Type--64-bit Windows 7
Shared Video RAM--1.7 GB
Dedicated Video RAM--64 MB
All drivers up to date

Specs for brother's Dell
Processor--Intel Pentium CPU P6200 2.13 GHz
RAM--3 GB
System Type--64-bit Windows 7
Shared Video RAM--1.2 GB
Dedicated Video RAM--64 MB
All drivers up to date

[cunny]

Try formatting the hard drive and reinstalling everything again

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[mihaitiberiu]

The amount of dedicated video ram tells o fairly weak video-card.

Try runing a video benchmark software (anything from madonion will do) and see if the problem isn't there.

Some last generation integrated videocards/gpus can't stand up to 10 year old top-of-the-line hardware, so there may be some issue there...

[rogermcgomry]

Cunny has a point. Does your laptop have a recovery partition? If so, just back up your data, and make sure you have all your software ready to install back. Then, use the recovery to refresh everything.

OH, and check your CPU fan first!! Open the computer and make sure the fan isn't clogged with dust. Take the fan off the heat sink to ensure the gills are clear. This will greatly reduce the computer's ability to cool off, causing a HUGE performance loss.