Neither of those will have DOS compatible sound cards.

For Windows 98, you will want to make sure that there are drivers available. The one with the GT420 will not have Windows 98 graphics drivers available.

For video cards and Windows 98, the newest that you can even get working are:
NVidia - 7900GTX / 7950GTX
ATI - x850xt

The sound card is going to be the biggest problem to find as of you want a laptop with a fast video card, you are going to need a PCMCIA sound card most likely running through an Expresscard adapter.

A fully DOS compatible laptop that will also run Win98 and XP games at respectable speed is not very easy.

By the time the faster laptop video cards were available, pretty much all mfgs had gone away fr PCMCIA slots and moved to Expresscard slots.

I really doubt it is even possible to get a PCMCIA card running in pure DOS with an Expresscard adapter as there is not going to be any DOS drivers available for the ExpressCard slot.

I will find out soon enough as I have a laptop on the way that I plan on using for a Win98 only laptop but I will test DOS on it as well.

The laptop doesn't use a GT420. It uses an old GeForce 4 MX chip and it has Win 98 drivers. For 3D gaming though, you'd want the Compaq, and the Radeon Mobility Pro chip, which should have 128MB and not 64. The non-Pro version has 32/64MB.

You might want to consider two laptops. Laptops that have good DOS capability are usually too slow for early XP gaming.

I have a Compaq armada 1750 with some ATI rage card and sound card that is DOS capable. It can probably run quake 2 and such games, I really haven't tested it enough, but I very much doubt it can dip into XP era gaming..

My tip is to get something like that or maybe a few years older, and maybe one of those Pentium m generation laptops for XP.

Ah, I misread it. Both of those are going to be horrid for anything on XP either way.

The pure DOS sound issue is still going to be there though. You could always use the build in emulation in Windows for DOS sound but that it going to be far from perfect and some game won't work with it.

Pretty much all docks that I am aware of that had at least one expansion card (ISA and or PCI) ended with the Pentium III era. The absolute newest I am aware of is the Dell D-Dock model PD01X which has a single PCI slot available. It is only good for low powered stuff such as sound cards.. or maybe a PCMCIA adapter card.. which is pretty much going to be the only way to get DOS sound and/or a gameport on one of the newer Dell laptops that can use the D series docks.

Newest is the Precision m6300 and the gen before that is the Precision M90 / XPS M1710 / Inspiron 9400, all of which have Expresscard slots though I did run across some info that the very early revision did have an option to have a PCMCIA slot instead but I have not been able to find any pictures or a part number so that is most likely not true.

Edit: there may be some even newer Dell laptops that use the D docks but the ones I listed are the newest that can take a video card that has Win98 drivers.

Thanks for your comments. On the top of having those laptops, im actively looking to buy an older laptop - Pentium 1 era with 640x480 display, which will eventually take over for DOS and Windows 95 games - but buying such laptop in a good condition and for the buck is not easy and it's hard to say how long im gonna be relying on one of those two for DOS games too.
Will those laptops be all right to at least run DOS games under DOSbox with some kind of video scalling/filtering?
Why are you saying that those laptops will give me a horrid experience in Windows XP? I remember that in WinXP times i used to have a Duron 1.4GHz and Radeon 9200. It wasnt the best desktop around, but will the Compaq offer me much worse experience?

I guess it depends on what games you want to run.

If nothing that is CPU intensive or GPU intensive, then it should be ok-ish but you will be on the really low end of an XP gaming machine.

XP is so much better on multi-core CPUs and I like to run everything at a minimum of 60fps with details turned up if I can.

I don't share the experience that old laptops are expensive. If you are not looking for NOS of course.

I think I got my armada 1750 for about 30$ 2-3 months ago. However they seldom come out so as usual patience is key.. And you to be prepared to perform some repairs and missing parts..

The repairs are usually easy though.. Many people think the computer is broken because it halts on a drained cmos battery... 😀

Ohh, ive got a few W95-era laptops i bought cheaply - around 50 pounds each, but those are not really suitable for DOS era gaming due to native screen resolution - 800x600. Things get more complicated with 640x480 laptops - not many of them being sold on ebay, rarely in good condition and the demand is huge.

Oh alright I'm not that specific in my demands. But I can see why you would want a 640x480 display...

I guess it's not possible to change a display like 800x600 to a 1280x960 one just to get the right pixel count..?

🤔