We compare two different theoretical models for a CO(2) laser, namely, the two- and four-level model, and show that the second one traces with much better accuracy the experimentally observed chaotic dynamics when the cavity losses are sinusoidally modulated. Even though the two-level model provides a qualitative explanation of the chaotic dynamics, only the four-level one assures a quantitative fitting. We also show that, at the onset of chaos, the chaotic dynamics is low dimensional and can be described in terms of a noninvertible one-dimensional map.