Hey,

Firstly, your computer does not meet the minimum system requirements for the game, Nvidia GT640 and GT640M (mobile version) have effective performance difference for around 32% in favour of desktop version.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-GT-640M-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-GT-640/m8030vsm7731

Secondly Intel core i5 doesn't mean anything since you didnt tell the exact model to check if it might be the bottleneck because the game is open world and requires a lot of processing power :)

Also I have a laptop Asus N76V with Intel i7-3610QM with gt650m. Processor is great but this graphics card turned out to be so bad for gaming that I wouldn't even try to run such high-end game on my hardware, it uses the old architecture and the performance is terrible even in some of the titles where it shouldn't be. I don't use this laptop for gaming sadly, eventhough I would like to sometimes when on the go.

However on my GTX970 desktop the game had few frame drops and what helped is putting my Nvidia OpenGL settings to performance mode, set the power consumption mode to "prefer maximum performance" and ultimately set the niceness (priority) of a process to very high, which allows me to get around stable 60FPS on Very High settings.

You should consider these settings on your desktop and put everything in game to lowest possible settings to see what you get! I wish you the best of luck with getting the game to work properly on that hardware but don't expect too much :)

Best regards!
MaCroX95

Quoting: GuestCheck CPU, GPU and RAM/swap usage and you will know what the problem is :).

What you describe sounds like the game might cause swap usage…

Yeah, might even be due to the thermal throttling since it starts up normally and then starts to lag horribly... it sounds like a common issue with my laptop when trying to run some games through wine :) firstly getting more than 60 fps and after few minutes of gameplay it starts dropping and becomes unplayable quickly (around 10fps)

as others said you should upgrade, mobile gpu's are always a lot worse than the desktop counterparts.

Thanks for the answers guys!

So, I see that is an Hardware problem :(
I think that the best thing for me is buy (build) a powerful Desktop and leave this laptop (that is in fact quite "old" (2012) for (gaming) computers standard today) for older or lighter games (all the others games I have on steam :D ).

I was planning to learn how to build a Destkop anyway, now I have one more reason to build one (next year)!

Thanks again and happy gaming to everyone!

PP

+Purple Pudding The GT 640M is good enough for Shadow of mordor on low settings.

Whoever says that a GT 650M is not good for linux gaming is plain wrong. It may not be ideal, but i CAN play Shadow of Mordor at 30fps low/med settings on 1366x768 and the framerate is quite consistent. Other games (PAYDAY 2, TF2, War Thunder, WoT + wine) are definitely playable, ok not smooth 60fps, but you get the point. For me playable is >=30 fps average and that is achievable on most(98%) games.

What you describe in your situation is definitely throttling that i have once experienced too. But i suggest you get more ram anyways (8GB is sufficient).

1. remove thermald. That is the main culprit that causes >85C cpu temp throttle. Without it it throttles at about 90C. My laptop likes to stay at about 87-88C so it really helped me. I noticed that since i moved from Ubuntu to Arch the throttling stopped and pinpointed it to that daemon

2. Put 'intel_pstate=disable' (no quotes) as kernel parameter

3. use indicator-cpufreq or cpupower to limit CPU clocks. I noticed that it helped a lot. For me Shadow of mordor is playable at 2Ghz (as opposed to 2.5 max)

4. https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/941511/linux/arch-linux-version-367-27-gt-650m-overheats-stays-at-950mhz-on-battery/
Follow the instructions there. Try turning on the card (if on bumblebee)* on battery, then open the game. It should disable turbo-boost as long as you keep the nvidia GPU open. However this doesnt work with the newest drivers (yet). It significantly reduces temps without any visible impact on performance for me.

All in all, your laptop isnt garbage, you can still use it before you get a desktop, even if it doesnt have the best cooling.
My specs:

Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5Ghz + Intel HD 4000
Nvidia Geforce Gt 650M 2GB
8GB ram
Arch Linux with KDE 5.7.4 and linux-lts

*IF not using bumblebee and using Ubuntu with the default drivers from the driver manager, try turning on your laptop on battery, then after it booted open nvidia-settings and THEN plug it in if you want

QuoteI thoght that my laptop just fit in the Minimium Requirements.

There's your problem. Laptops are poorly suited for gaming in general, especially when they barely meet the minimum requirements. There's not much you can do about it apart from getting a whole new system.

Quoting: silverphil+Purple Pudding The GT 640M is good enough for Shadow of mordor on low settings.

Whoever says that a GT 650M is not good for linux gaming is plain wrong. It may not be ideal, but i CAN play Shadow of Mordor at 30fps low/med settings on 1366x768 and the framerate is quite consistent. Other games (PAYDAY 2, TF2, War Thunder, WoT + wine) are definitely playable, ok not smooth 60fps, but you get the point. For me playable is >=30 fps average and that is achievable on most(98%) games.

What you describe in your situation is definitely throttling that i have once experienced too. But i suggest you get more ram anyways (8GB is sufficient).

1. remove thermald. That is the main culprit that causes >85C cpu temp throttle. Without it it throttles at about 90C. My laptop likes to stay at about 87-88C so it really helped me. I noticed that since i moved from Ubuntu to Arch the throttling stopped and pinpointed it to that daemon

2. Put 'intel_pstate=disable' (no quotes) as kernel parameter

3. use indicator-cpufreq or cpupower to limit CPU clocks. I noticed that it helped a lot. For me Shadow of mordor is playable at 2Ghz (as opposed to 2.5 max)

4. https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/941511/linux/arch-linux-version-367-27-gt-650m-overheats-stays-at-950mhz-on-battery/
Follow the instructions there. Try turning on the card (if on bumblebee)* on battery, then open the game. It should disable turbo-boost as long as you keep the nvidia GPU open. However this doesnt work with the newest drivers (yet). It significantly reduces temps without any visible impact on performance for me.

All in all, your laptop isnt garbage, you can still use it before you get a desktop, even if it doesnt have the best cooling.
My specs:

Intel Core i5-3210M 2.5Ghz + Intel HD 4000
Nvidia Geforce Gt 650M 2GB
8GB ram
Arch Linux with KDE 5.7.4 and linux-lts

*IF not using bumblebee and using Ubuntu with the default drivers from the driver manager, try turning on your laptop on battery, then after it booted open nvidia-settings and THEN plug it in if you want

I definitely agree with you, noone said that his hardware is junk, I also have gt650m and these specs are great for handling a great amount of great titles! We are though speaking of Shadow of mordor here and if laptop cannot run this game at 60fps I just cannot blame it on it :D, it's really demanding game! He doesn't have to just enjoy his hardware until he buys a new laptop, he can enjoy it way further in the future with running great games that are not as demanding on the go! Great job on giving advice on how to maximize the performance and make our gaming more comfortable with laptops in linux, I really didn't know about that thermald thing :)