Unexpectedly low performance? Please help!

Hi, I just received a new laptop in the mail today, and I'm freaking out, since I bought what I thought was going to be a pretty beastly computer, but its turned out to be very slow, and games like BF3, Anno 1404 and Napoleon Total War, which I expected to have seamless performance, are performing EXTREMELY laggy. These are my specs:

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

Intel Core i7 2720QM @ 2.20GHz
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology

12.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz

1536MB GeForce GTX 560M

I assumed it might have had something to do with drivers, but Im not entirely sure. Again, the performance from games is extremely laggy and I could really use some help in fixing this, since I dropped quite a sum of money on this laptop! Thanks!

Which laptop do you have? Does it have Optimus technology? If so then its probably that the laptop is using the integrated GPU while you're playing games. I have never used a computer with optimus so I would not know how to adjust the settings. Its just an idea of where do look.