oldschool gaming on 945G?

[Kaldskryke]

I guess I don't really have a handle on just how inferior the 945G chipset is. Would I able to play older games like Painkiller, Mafia, or Max Payne at 1024x600? I'm thinking of getting an MSI wind and I've got plenty of old games I never got around to finishing.

Okay, maybe those games aren't 'oldschool', but they're still showing their age.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Yes, it should be fine... I ran Dark Age of Camelot up to the last expansion, and games like Unreal Tournament (99) OK enough on an even slower ATI chipset built into a notebook I've had for about 6 years now. It is running at 1400x1050 resolution, too. I'm also planning on getting a 6-cell MSI Wind once they're available, this thought occurred to me as well to play games on it occasionally . Heck, some people have found a workaround to get the Source engine games to run properly, and with some tweaking they look decent in DX8.1 mode as well as running nicely enough to play (Orange Box games such as Half-Life 2, TF2, etc.).

 

[MrAgmoore]

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyI7CoUXtPo

Mafia doesn't look old at all. It won game of the year 2002 ( back when that actually meant something ).

The game is epic. You owe it to the developers to finish it! Here's some music from the game to inspire you:

Django Reinhardt - Minor Swing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEzsPGHsi90


Max Payne 2 is fun too.

Mafia is # 96 on IGN's top 100 games of all time:

http://top100.ign.com/2005/091-100.html

 

[pxc]

Some old games won't play at 1024x600, although there might be hacks. See http://www.widescreengamer.com/widescreen_games_database/ or http://www.widescreengamer.com/m/max_payne.html for a specific example for Max Payne. Two of the three games you mentioned have wide screen workarounds.

Intel's driver support fixed aspect ratio, so you can get black bars on the side instead of a distorted stretched image if the game only plays in a 4:3 resolution.

At 800x600, all 3 of those games will probably play. The most demanding game I could play on my old 915GM/GMA950 (200MHz graphics core version) laptop was Need for Speed: Underground with medium settings at 800x600. UT 2003 also played OK with medium settings at 1280x800. Don't expect miracles.

There's two versions of the 945GM, one that runs the graphics core at 400MHz like the desktop version and one that runs at 250MHz. The MSI Wind almost certainly runs the slower speed version to save battery life whether it's plugged in or not. Only larger form factor laptops used the 400MHz core version. Just keep that in mind if you start looking up 945G/GMA950 (later renamed to GMA3000... note not the X3000, just 3000) gaming benchmarks.