Laptop seems like it should run way faster

I have the following laptop:

HP Envy

i7-6500U

16GB

Nvidia 940M 2GB

I was trying to play some basic games and it was just lagging terribly. I read on intel that it could run higher than it shows, but I am unsure on how to get it to run faster. Can someone help me on what to do to get this CPU to run faster?

@Diddies: What games did you tried to run?

CPU is like a desktop i3 with lower clocks (2,5GHz, 3,1GHz turbo) and GPU is like 60% performance of GTX750.

So I think your CPU isn't limiting anything, your GPU does.

I bought this laptop to just do basic things and my wife downloaded the sims 3 and it has a hard time running that. I am unsure where threshold is on games to play because I looked and it says to run that at on all high settings

And I thought my GPU was my strong suit of the laptop. Also how do I make it go up to 3.1GHz?

You don't - it does it by itself when required (aka gaming and editing).

Sims 4 benchmarks with your GPU:

Sims 4

low 1024x768161.1172.2 ~ 167 fps

med. 1366x76866.289.1 ~ 78 fps

high 1920x108035.741.8 ~ 39 fps

ultra 1920x108028.834.2 ~ 32 fps

If you're trying to play this game at 1080p play it on low settings, if you're playing it at 768p then you can play it on medium or low.

Anything beyond the settings I've suggested will cause low fps.