As far as PIII gaming laptops go, this is a pretty good score!

The SB and WSS-compatible sound card is a HUGE win. Most PIII era laptops don't have this.

The Neomagic card isn't the worst thing in the world. For a laptop, it's pretty good.

This thing will do awesome with all DOS games and pretty well with a lot of late 90's Windows games.

Huh. That is very interesting.

I bought a Sony Vaio PCG-Z505LEK around 2004 to basically serve as a lightweight, portable Internet device around my home. Obviously netbooks and tablets were a few years away. I wasn't into retro computing at the time - I just wanted to surf on my couch.

I still have that machine, but it is in a different city. Now you have me wondering just what sort of old gaming it could do. It came with Windows 2000. Squeezing Windows XP with the latest service pack under 192 MB of RAM was what first introduced me to n-lite. Never thought about going backwards.

The LEK edition came out not too long after the JS you mentioned and bumped the graphics to an ATI RAGE Mobility with 8 MB SDRAM. I had to look at the specs online for the audio, but it also just lists "Hardware MIDI" and "Windows Sound System Compatible" like yours. Doesn't mention 3D surround, though. I guess I would need to Google around or retrieve the old machine in order to check on the sound hardware involved.

The included, external floppy drive is the very drive I use for writing floppies from my main PC for use in the retro PCs to this day.

The native display is 1024x768. I can't remember scaling for 800x600 or 640x480. If I tried 320x200 13h stuff, it probably centered it on the screen at a wide aspect ratio and placed black bars on top and bottom - but then maybe I never tried that and am thinking of some other laptop over a period of 15 years.

Keep this thread running and let us know what you try, will ya?

So, I have done some testing and these are the results.

A recurring theme in these tests is that running a game in Direct3D mode tends to perform much worse than running in Software mode. Luckily, Software mode still allows most of the graphics settings to be turned on with this laptop.

Unreal Tournament runs at a steady 30FPS in software mode at 512 x 384 (half the native resolution), lowering the res to 320 x 240 provides a near flawless 60FPS experience. Direct3D mode is unplayable, and Glide wrappers do not work with this laptop. Running in D3D mode introduces black boxes where menu text should be, rendering the menus unreadable.

Croc: Legend of the Gobbos is a similar story. 25 - 30FPS at 512 x 384 in software, near constant 60FPS at 320 x 240. Direct3D IS playable in this title, but drops the framerate by 5 - 10 FPS at the same settings.

Pong: The Next Level - 20 - 25 FPS at 512 x 384, 45 - 50 at 320x240, D3D drops framerate in half.

Deus Ex - 15 - 25 FPS at 640 x 480 in software mode. Main menu lags heavily, to around 3 - 5 FPS, which I believe is due to the spinning, shiny 3D logo in the background. D3D mode introduces black boxes around menu text, unless texture color depth is raised to 32 bit. Unfortunately, this laptop's graphics chip only goes up to 24 bit. The result of this is that the game will attempt to go into a 32 bit full screen mode, but will always immediately revert to a 640x480 window. The game doesn't crash though, so there's that. D3D mode runs at 8 - 15 FPS at 640 x 480, and does not have main menu slowdown.

Road Rash has a flawless framerate at max settings at 640x480. I don't know if it's running at 30 or 60, but it looks like 60, and I haven't noticed a single framedrop.

Half Life runs at a consistent 30FPS in software mode in most instances (at 512 x 384). I have not tested lower resolutions. This is fine for me. I have not tested Direct3D in this game either, and I no longer have it installed to test.

The Adventures of Lomax is a rather unpleasant experience. It is unplayable in 16 bit fullscreen, and lowering it to 320 x 240 256 colors only helps so much - there is still constant stuttering going on and improper frame timings.

Max Payne boots to the menu, but crashes or hangs at the loading screen. NeoMagic is listed at unsupported on the official website.

Postal 2 will not run.

No One Lives Forever 2 will not run.

Older DOS games all run flawlessly at their highest settings, even the likes of Screamer 2. Some games do not detect the sound card under native DOS, but most of them will at least be able to utilize Sound Blaster.

keenmaster486 wrote:

The Neomagic card isn't the worst thing in the world. For a laptop, it's pretty good.

Had it in a PII laptop, wasn't overly impressed, struggled through the monster truck madness demo sorta playably though.

Having owned and worked on a few 90's laptops. mostly dell's and Toshiba's, Neomagic's is hit or miss depending on the gpu version. Some are like a older rage card others make a verge look fast. If you keep to 1996 and older games your be fine. but get into later DX3d games or higher screen res and your be pushing it.

If I were to buy a laptop from the 90's I'd go for one with a rage, if I wanted to play games.

Jade Falcon wrote:

If I were to buy a laptop from the 90's I'd go for one with a rage, if I wanted to play games.

I remember finding a rage gl driver that was at least twice as fast as D3D for quake engine games. Not sure if that was a specially tweaked non-official one or what, it was fairly impressive.