Maybe an idea to define OLD GAMES a bit more explicitly. Really old DOS is clear enough, but all the other stuff is from the Windows XP era or later. How much Win9x do you play?

If you want DOS on the Epia, there's no point in doing 128MB RAM:
- there are no DOS games that use more than 16MB
- some games with short-sighted memory detection routines fail with 'out of memory' errors with too much memory (usually >16MB)

If you want Windows 98SE, the Pentium 4M would be best bet, assuming there are decent drivers. I would not expect there to be WIndows 95 drivers for it (a lot would be WDM-only).
WIndows 7 would be pushing it on these systems - the OS would run fine on anything with 2GB of RAM or more, but games designed for Windows 7 would not run well on low-end GF9400M or slower - you can forget Crysis on that.

Any particular reasons why you're mainly using laptops? For newer stuff they offer little expandability of GPU, for older stuff no option to add exotic sound cards or3D accelerators. And none of these look like they have good TFT panels either.

dionb wrote on 2024-03-26, 19:08:

Maybe an idea to define OLD GAMES a bit more explicitly. Really old DOS is clear enough, but all the other stuff is from the Win […]
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Maybe an idea to define OLD GAMES a bit more explicitly. Really old DOS is clear enough, but all the other stuff is from the Windows XP era or later. How much Win9x do you play?

If you want DOS on the Epia, there's no point in doing 128MB RAM:
- there are no DOS games that use more than 16MB
- some games with short-sighted memory detection routines fail with 'out of memory' errors with too much memory (usually >16MB)

If you want Windows 98SE, the Pentium 4M would be best bet, assuming there are decent drivers. I would not expect there to be WIndows 95 drivers for it (a lot would be WDM-only).
WIndows 7 would be pushing it on these systems - the OS would run fine on anything with 2GB of RAM or more, but games designed for Windows 7 would not run well on low-end GF9400M or slower - you can forget Crysis on that.

Any particular reasons why you're using laptops? For newer stuff they offer little expandability of GPU, for older stuff no option to add exotic sound cards or3D accelerators. And none of these look like they have good TFT panels either.

Sorry, I forgot to mention SPACE IN MY COMPUTER ROOM, is the main problem... hehehe

OLD GAMES for me are defined as games newer as DX 8.1 AS MUCH...

VIA EPIA was 64Mb RAM sorry...

Pentium 4M HAS decent drivers, I tested UNREAL and some DOS stuff like that (I have now Warcraft 2, or Max Payne to test its Mobility 7500)... my idea to use the model with 9400m is that maybe with XP... will be better (Crysis is not on my agenda...)

Laptops are not the best LCD solution, I know, but the Compaq or using the Acer on the Flatron 15"... makes them much better... and the 9400m is better than the 7500.... or even the X3150 of the netbook is useful...

My idea is to remember games... and I have found that DOSBOX Stagging is not always that 100% real solution because they are not really emulated as they were...