So I've noticed an issue lately. My performance in games has just been really bad when it shouldn't be. For example, I'm having framerate issues in a game on the lowest POSSIBLE video settings for a game I used to have no issues on high settings. And it isn't just this game, it's a few games. And this is after reinstalling windows a week or two ago.

I've also noticed my MEMORY usage being pretty high compared to normal 40%-60%. Granted, this is with firefox the hog running. But I'm having abnormally high memory usage regardless, even without firefox running.

And I can feel my laptop seems to be running hotter than normal. So my question is, does anyone have an idea what's CAUSING this and what I should do? The performance is concerning because despite being a laptop, it should be performing better (because it has before). I'm worried it's a hardware issue as a reinstall of windows didn't really improve anything.

Acer Aspire V3 771G
Running Windows 8.1
Nvidia 650 GTM
8gb RAM