Gaming on a Precision M20

So, I picked up one of those cheap M20s from the Outlet awhile back, and it's been great. The one catch is it doesn't game very well at all. I expected this, of course, since the graphics card is just a 64mb Ati Mobility FireGL v3100 (to my understanding, essentially an x300 with different OpenGL clockspeeds for greater stability and lesser speed). However, I was still hoping to be able to tweak it to run at least older games (namely NWN, Halflife 1, and Planeshift).

None of those games worked when installed, all crashing pretty much immediately and mysteriously. I ended up dragging the "troubleshooting" thing in the display/graphics part of the control panel almost all the way to the left until it finally started working, but it was incredibly slow (in the case of NWN) or just plain ugly (in the case of Halflife). Plus, this may be partially my imagination, but I think it slowed down the rest of my computer too.

I then figured out (duh, I know) that it was the OpenGL and not the general accelerations, so I cranked the troubleshoot back all the way back to the right and just disabled OpenGL accelerations in the separate checkbox (note, I have the latest Omegadrivers installed and am using ATI Traytools to config this). Now at least the rest of my computer runs as fast as it should, and the games still run as before (e.g. they start, but run poorly).

Now I'm poking around and trying to figure out if there's any way to get OpenGL accelerations working with my graphics card in a manner that will make it at least somewhat suitable for light-to-mid gaming. I haven't found anything too helpful out on the net: most people are trying to do the opposite of me (that is, make their x300/600 card act like a FireGL, not the reverse). So, any hints or helpful points out there?

Thanks, that's what I thought. The one thing I need is to know how exactly to "force" the type to be an X300. I've installed the latest Omegadrivers as I said, and in the display config in the control panel it actually does identify the graphics as powered by an X300, but the game behavior seems to indicate otherwise. Is there some other set of drivers I should be looking for, or some specific way to configure them to do this "forcing" (it has this "Softmod Swapper" tool that lets me choose between "Normal Driver", "Force 9700" and "Force 9800" - I'm currently using normal, I think the others are for cards different from the X series entirely, but I could be wrong).

And to the first respondent:

http://www.notebookforums.com/showpo...3&postcount=26

http://www.notebookforums.com/showpo...65&postcount=6

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=110862

And what I paid for my laptop is, generally speaking, my business, and pretty irrelevant to the question I asked anyway. That said, it's also probably pretty easy to intuit, seeing as how I said I bought it from the Dell Outlet awhile back, and there were many threads (and even frontpage posts on some notebook sites) highlighting the recent Dell Precision laptop deals in the Outlet.

I'm sorry to bump here, but I really am wondering if somebody out there has the answer to this. I've done a bit more research, and still most people are trying to do the opposite (that is, make an X-series act like a FireGL, not a FireGL like an X-series). I imagine both are possible, if the hardware really is as similar as most everyone says, but it'd be nice to know what really needs to be done to get it working.

Hrm okay, well the card is installed as an x300 (that is, Windows thinks it is one), but I checked the bios and it still thinks it's a Firegl V3100. And it's still acting like one (e.g. OpenGL dependent games are generally failing).

Any other hints for how to make it act like an x300?