Is something wrong with my video card or is it just not that good?

[jmflu]

Forgive my noobness as I am very new to PCs.

So I have an inspiron laptop with the following specs

Intel Core i7-3612QM CPU @ 2.10 Ghz 2.10 Ghz
8 GM Ram
AMD Radeon HD 7730M card
and it also says Intel HD Graphics 4000 as a secon display adapter

So I am trying to play a game (Mass Effect 3) and it just runs terribly choppy to where it is unplayable. I was under the impression that this video card was good enough to play games (is it not?)

Should it be able to play a game like this on reasonable settings?

I am on High Performance battery mode with the laptop plugged in as I was told that may help but it didn't.

I have the latest drivers installed etc but why would it be doing this?

Is it trying to use the Intel HD graphics? Or is it using the Radeon and just failing?

Any help on this would be appreciated because I thought this was a gaming laptop (I knew it wouldnt be super high end) but I thought it would be more playable.

 

[Sunius]

What graphics settings are you trying to play on? According to this, http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-7730M.72678.0.html you shouldn't be able to play on higher than low settings.

 

[jmflu]

ok that may be true but it seemed super super low.

I think I may have fixed it by going into the AMD control panel and Mass Effect 3 was listed as 'not assigned' and I changed it to high performance and it made a world of difference.

 

[jaguarskx]

Mass Effect 3 isn't really a graphically demanding game. I decided to complete the game on Insanity level on my Lenovo Y470 using the Intel HD 3000 rather than the nVidia GT 550m. Yeah, there is a noticeable difference in performance, but I didn't find it too much more difficult to finish the game on Insanity compared to playing it on my desktop with a Radeon HD 5850.