Can turning everything off or on low on the Nvidia Control Panel improve game performance?

I have an ASUS G73sw gaming laptop and it features a 1.5 gb Nvidia GeForce GTX 460m graphics card. I have tried to play F.E.A.R on maxed settings and usually get 40 frames per second. I know this is very playable but my friends tell me that it should get 100+ frames per second. One of my friends told me to go the Nvidia Control Panel and turn everything on off or on low and that will improve performance. I need to know if this is true, if it even works, and if it works, how does it work?