Maximum PC

I own an Acer Aspire V5-171-6867 (http://www.cnet.com/laptops/acer-aspire-v5-171/4505-3121_7-35412281.html), but something appears to be wrong. I am 100% happy with it given the price (I have an extremely powerful desktop, so I like something for work and low end games), but my friend's laptop with an i5-2450M, a Sandy Bridge chip with Intel Graphics 3000, seems to be able to get vaguely playable frame rates in games like Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2. However, when my computer, with Intel Graphics 4000, which gets rave reviews from everyone about being 50% more powerful than the 3000 chips, tries to run Tribes : Ascend (I didn't even dream of running PS2), I get 30-11 FPS. And when I Google "Intel Graphics 4000 running X" I get a video of somebody running something ridiculous like Metro 2033 (however, a bit more digging reveals it's always a desktop chipset, but that usually doesn't amount to an 80% increase in performance).

Now I have messed around with the settings to some degree (I am quite sure that I have set the graphics within the Intel driver to run full bore), and I have the thing sitting on a cooling pad, so heat doesn't seem to be an issue. Are there any esoteric settings I missed? Should I try the highly controversial art of perma-unparking cores? Am I just stupid/crazy/oxygen deprived?

The problem may lie in your CPU, which doesn't perform as well as i5-2450M.

Really? Ivy bridge sacrifices CPU power?

I didn't really think about that, I thought that if it could deal with TF2 (which, due to an outdated engine, is surprisingly CPU hungry), it could deal with a lot of games.

Is there anything I can do to eke out a little bit more POWAH!?

So here's the thing. Your laptop is an Ultrabook, it's sacrificing performance to fit in the chassis due to thermal constraints. Yes you bought a cooling pad, but unfortunately those can only blow air on the chassis. Since the cooling solution is usually not affixed to the chassis (you don't want this anyway), you're providing minimal cooling. On that note, your processor is slower (1.7GHz base clock vs. 2.5GHz on the Core i5-2450M) and even though you have an HD4000, it too is clocked a lot slower (350MHz base clock vs. 650MHz).

There's nothing you can do to squeeze extra power out of the laptop. You can't overclock it and you really don't want to anyway. The only thing you really can do is have Windows force the CPU and GPU in their highest performance states in Full Performance mode.

Dayum.

Well thanks anyways, It doesn't really matter, It's not like I can't play these more punishing games at all, I just can't play them while on the go. I can still play Starcraft 2 and Source games, so I'm happy.