Can a powerful graphics card slow laptop down?

Question

I've recently bought a new laptop - DELL Inspiron 15 from 5000 series.

It includes a 4GB graphics card while having only 4GB of RAM. The problem is, the laptop works slower than any of my other devices. So... could it be that this powerful graphics card slows the computer down?

I'm attaching the properties (they're in French, however, but you'll understand, I think. I could change the system language and re-write this, if necessary):

Système d'exploitation :                Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit
Version de DirectX :                    12.0 
Processeur graphique :                  GeForce 920M
Version du pilote :                     359.06
Version d'API Direct3D :                12
Niveau de fonctionnalité Direct3D :     11_0
Noyaux CUDA :                           384 
Horloge principale :                    954 MHz 
Débit de données mémoire :              1800 MHz
Interface de mémoire :                  64 bits 
Largeur de bande mémoire :              14.40 Go/s
Mémoire graphique disponible totale :   6099 Mo
Mémoire vidéo dédiée :                  4096 Mo de DDR3
Mémoire vidéo du système :              0 Mo
Mémoire du système partagée :           2003 Mo
Version BIOS vidéo :                    80.28.8A.00.12
IRQ :                                   Not used
Bus :                                   PCI Express x4 Gen2
ID de périphérique :                    10DE 1299 06AE1028
Référence :                             2045 0000

Here's the system information:

Can you advise anything to speed up my PC? I thought about upgrading RAM to 8GB or something.

Answer 1

A powerful GPU will not slow down a computer compared to a less powerful GPU. However, keep in mind that some GPUs, particularly on laptops, use main system memory (RAM) for themselves. For example, your computer may have 4 GB of RAM but the laptop graphics chip may allocate 1 GB to video memory.

That doesn't appear to be the case here. Your GPU appears to have its own dedicated video memory, though it's hard to be sure as, unfortunately, I cannot read French.

Note that it is not the case that you have a powerful graphics card. The 920M is a very weak graphics card most suitable for running older games, or modern games only at low resolution and low quality. Probably best to restrict it to multimedia, such as playing videos.

Your CPU is reasonable. It's not a high-end CPU by any stretch of the imagination, but should be plenty for most tasks. As previously mentioned, your GPU is unsuitable for gaming and there's nothing you can do about this. The biggest upgrade you could make is to add to your system RAM. 4 GB was borderline appropriate five years ago, but simply isn't enough now. You didn't specify what you want to do with your laptop, but I'd say 8 GB is the absolute minimum you could consider. I've literally thrown away machines with more than 8 GB of RAM. Your system RAM is going to be your first bottleneck for almost anything you plan to do on that computer.

If you don't have an SSD, replacing your existing mechanical drive with an SSD can be pretty spectacular, but it can be tricky to move your operating system to the new drive. That's the next upgrade I'd consider.

Beyond that, you are rather limited. Laptops aren't very upgradeable. Make sure you have the latest drivers and make sure you've removed any crapware from your operating system.

Answer 2

Having a good graphics card will not slow your computer down, it will speed it up and perform better especially when playing demanding 3D games. It will likely use more power and the laptop will have a shorter battery life. When you say "performs" poorer than your other devices, in what circumstances is this under? Is this with gaming or with web browsing etc? If your other devices have better cpu, ram hdd/ssd etc then they will perform better under circumstances that utilize those components.