W510 performance faster with external monitor?

[MichaelHacker]

Greetings,

I have a minor but vexing issue with my W510, NVidia FX 880M and 8 MB of RAM, 64 bit Windows 7 (Also I recently swapped out the 7400 rps drive with an HP SSD). Here's the thing: with an external monitor plugged into the docking station, I get a healthy 45-65 frames per second on my favorite game (WoW). However, when the laptop is operating without being in the docking station (and without the external monitor) this performance slows to an agonizingly sluggish and unplayable 8-10 frames per second. I have tried to use the Nvidia Control utility to make sure that everything goes through the video card but no luck. I'm an intermediate user with some experience with hardware. If you can please help, please help and you will inspire my goodwill and gratitude. If I can avoid a system reset, I would prefer that because there's a lot of business software on this unit too.

Best regards,
Mike
PS--I did a search for this issue prior to posting--so if it's already been addressed in the forums, my regrets, and I would appreciate a link to the proper topic if at all possible.

[QWERTY Andreas]

Are you using a 135W charger in both situations?

[MichaelHacker]

Are you using a 135W charger in both situations?

I will have to check. One may be a 90W. Not in front of the machine right now, but will post a reply later today. Thanks for the suggestion.