Precision M6800 Slow / poor performance

Hello,
my Dell Precision M6800 is sluggish -- any ideas why or what I can do to improve its performance?

Specs:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Intel Core i7 4800MQ @ 2.7GHZ
Intel HD Graphics 4600
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 8950
465 GB Seagate SSD
16GB RAM

I bought it new 3-4 years ago and specced it as high as I could afford.

I also have a Lenovo x240 -- I run them both on my desk, side by side, and use Synergy so I can use one mouse/keyboard on them both. My Lenovo generally performs better for most day to day tasks. So there is definitely something wrong!

My day to day work (these days) is mostly web-based. So I tend to have a LOT of Chrome tabs open (EG 100+) in 4-5 Chrome windows -- on both computers. I have 10+ Chrome plugins active (synced across computers so its the same on both). On top of that I'll have a notepad++ instance open and maybe Office Word or Excel.
In this work environment, my Lenovo reacts perfectly, but with LESS tabs open on my Dell I get web pages crashing, very slow mouse movement, the 'whirring' cursor, and general low-performance issues.

I can run Photoshop and After Effects on the Dell reasonably well, although not as good a performance as I'd expect. But it really doesn't like browsers!

I've recently upgraded all drivers and bios (graphics etc) from the Dell site. Deleted any antivirus programs. Run a optimization disk check, etc. But still poor performance.
= apparently all my hardware passed all checks on the bios check.

So -- does anyone have any idea how I can get this thing up to its 'proper' performance or what might be causing it to be out-performed by the Lenovo?

Thanks!

 

Just checking --- Do you have a 240W power supply attached?

 

As Aaron pointed out: any power adapter below 240W will cause throttling.

My old m6800 ran at 400 to 800 Mhz in that case.

Please check what TaskManager shows as current clock speed.

 

Hi -- thanks for the replies!
Yes, I have a 240W Power adapter attached (it came with the laptop).
Speed = right now I'm not using it but it has 50-100 Chrome tabs open and 5-6 File Explorers open and the speed is moving around between 1.40 GHZ to 1.90GHZ

 

Do you use it mostly plugged in or docked? You could try turning graphics switching off in the BIOS. This would make the AMD GPU drive everything more "responsively" than the Intel GPU, even for "simple" tasks like browsing. The downside would be a hit to battery life.

 

Hi -- thanks again.
I rarely ever use it on battery -- it is big and heavy and I don't honestly believe it should be moved around too much! (One journey with my Alienware laptop and it was never the same again, these are 'desktop laptops! imo)

Thanks, so from what you say I should try switching off graphic switching, if it's on.
Seems strange, though -- that the Lenovo should be overall faster (for this kind of task) than the Dell.

 

Try blowing out the exhaust ports for the fans (with a compressed air can). Remove the back plate and top front plate first. I had problems with my M6500 that went away when I did that (eventually came back as things got dusty again, same treatment fixed it).

Might also be thermal paste problems with the CPU.

 

Do you know temps? Hwinfo would be the tool to monitor your computer during the day and see if any issues lies there.
Note that, GPU memory chip etc will not show up, only the gpu die is measured. (I had this issue causing slowdowns on all OS'es).
You can verify if the gpu is overheating by removing the gpu and run the computer without the card inside and see if it gets slow again or not.

Do you see any errors in Event log at the timestamp when the computer starts getting slow?
Or any processes in the task manager that is peaking and stealing the resources?

What happens if you go into bios and turn off intel speedstep?

The only perhaps bad thing I can see by your specs is the hard drive.
That Seagate might be known to lockup under write intensive loads.
I don't know the specifics about how your slowdown is played out, how long it goes on etc.
I had the same experience with the 850 evo, I took it because I didn't want to spend too much this time but I discovered that the os started to lockup from time to time during write intensive tasks while my older intel 530 did just fine that is MLC based.
I replaced that and bough a 860 evo in the msata slot and put the 850 in a box and I haven't seen any bottleneck slowdowns caused by the drive since then.

Is this the drive you have?
https://www.storagereview.com/seagate_barracuda_ssd_review

You could run a trim command time to time, just open defragment and press optimize on that drive and see if the performance jumps right up to full performance