Game Lags On My Computer Only

Hi, I am running into problems on my current project. When we added new rigged characters (about 5k poly count with mixamo rig) the fps dropped dramatically. When 4 of theses characters where on screen my frame rate dropped to 10 - 20 fps. After a few days of trying to figure out what was causing the lag I discovered that on my laptop, which is not as powerful as my desktop, Unity was able to handle more characters with higher fps. I have tested the game on a total of 5 computers now and mine is the only one with major lag. I've tried to update my drivers, I ran task manager and closed all other applications while running game, and reinstalled Unity. Nothing seems to work something is not right.

Here are the specs to my desktop:

Windows 8 Pro with Media Center 64-bit
AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
RAM : 8GB
Hardrive: 500GB w/ 122GB free

I also took a screen shot of the project with stats shown:
http://ralemproductions.com/screenShotProblem.png

Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

How does your desktop compare to your laptop in a non-Unity benchmarking tool such as 3DMark? If your desktop is faster, then it's probably a Unity-only problem. If your desktop is slower, it might still be an OS or driver issue, or even a hardware issue.

What happens in Unity if you drop quality (Edit > Project Settings > Quality) to Fastest? This might eliminate some hardware features that your desktop's drivers might not be handling correctly.

 

So my laptop specs are:

AMD A8-3500M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Windows 7 Home Edition
AMD Radeon(TM) HD 6620G
Ram: 6GB

I also sent the project over to a friend who had a lower specs than that and it ran better than my desktop. I've definetly narrowed it down to Unity, but I am stuck. Have other people had a problem with Windows 8. That seems to be the only thing that is unique about my desktop computer. If it is something else conflicting I don't know how to diagnose the problem.

I have had the project settings on Quality > Fastest as well.

 

Can you install Windows 7 on a separate partition on your desktop and test it? I've seen other threads where people were asking about Windows 8 performance, such as: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/187905-Windows-8-Performance-Problems-with-Unity-Games

 

I was once in a similar situation. Turned out that my video card was going bad because the fan was failing, which ultimately destroyed the card. After I replaced the card, everything was fine.

 

I was lucky enough to have a spare 120GB solid state hard drive laying around, and an old Windows 7 boot disk. So I spent all night installing Windows 7 on a separate partition, then installing Unity. On Windows 8 I was getting 10-20 FPS now with the same exact hardware and project on Windows 7 I am getting 60 - 70 FPS. Having 2 separate partitions is not ideal, but the work around will have to do until Unity updates to be compatible with Windows 8. Thanks for the help from everyone.