Poor performance?

I've had my laptop for about a year now, and to be honest, it's never given me the performance I've expected or wanted. I have to run older games like Borderlands on low settings for them to be remotely playable. On high, the game usually just crashes. Same with things like Crysis, Assassin's Creed, and Left 4 Dead 2. Similarly, I'm always the last to load into games of League of Legends, significantly slower than even those that have much worse, run-of-the-mill laptops.

Either Alienware is just not the powerhouse I expected, or there's something wrong with my laptop. The only thing I can think of is that I've never upgraded any drivers (I'm just using the default, because when I tried to update them, I almost bricked my computer and had to use the recovery disk).

Specs:
i7-740QM
ATI 5850
6 GB RAM
320 GB

Does anyone know, first of all, an easy way to check if it's a computer problem? And second of all, why is my performance so terrible? I researched this computer for months before buying it, and all the benchmarks I saw should have been able to play Borderlands on max settings easily.

 

the M15x should run all those at max or near it. dell drivers aren't that great but shouldn't effect performance that much, but the newer driver will help get better performance.

first off check stealth mode. toggle it on and off. then play your games, if that doesn't fix it then try this.

download throttle stop and gpu-z

Downloads | Tech|Inferno

techPowerUp! :: Downloads

use these to make a log of your gameplay and up load them here so we can look at it.

i also recommend running the high performance power plan. also go into the ccc panel, check to see if power play is enabled and set for max performance.

 

there is something definately wrong.
also 1 quick question, is the AC power adapter plugged in?

also one other thing to make sure we're not leaving out any possible problems, download watto's stealth indicator and run it.

you will get a little alien logo in the system tray.
if it's a green alien - that's a good sign, if it's red - you need to togggle stealth mode.

 

There is definitely something wrong. My M15x is almost the same specs, I also have LFD2, and I can max it.