Not sure what your laptop specs are, but it's usually tough to get a great game with a laptop. You'll need to adjust as needed and cut off as many background program and services as possible.
With Gold you are totally current with patches and fixes game wise. There are many mods that add reality, fixes for playability and difficulty to the game.
Game Fixes Only is a mod and not a required patch for Gold. If you want to remain with the stock playability this would be a great place to start.
There are many mods to choose from, TMO, RFB, GFO, FORS are the major supermods. After that there are many......smaller mods. However, most of the supermods have fixed any bugs and have included about everything you need. Take time and go to the Mod Forum here and check out each mod. Stock is OK, but mods improve the game 100%.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=219
