A question on Fallout 3 system requirements

The minimum game specs for fallout three state that it requires 2.4ghz pentium 4 or equivalent processor. Say for example you owned a 2ghz core2duo processor would it be able to run the game even though it is 400mhz below the requirement or does dual core have no effetc what so ever?
thanks for any answres.

 

2GHz dual-core is more powerful than a 2.4GHz pentium 4 generally even if the task on hand doesn't support multithreading. I cannot give you an expert's opinion on why that's the case, that's what I've learnt from reading the forums. The 2GHz dual-core is more efficient at performing single-core tasks than the 2 generation old pentium 4 so a dual-core rated at 2Ghz will have little problem meeting the Pentium 4 2.4Ghz requirement.

For some reason games still use the pentium 4 as the yardstick for processor requirements, some games do state a dual-core with frequency as a recommended processor and these recommendations on paper normally have the minimum pentium 4 processor clocked higher than the recommended dual-core.

 

The processor requirements are antiquated on games since they are still referencing a dead (Pentium 4) architecture. Many games are starting to say things like "2.4GHz Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent or dual core processor"
This is much better, but will also be antiquated since you can't really compare an Athlon 64 to a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo by clocks because their performance per clock is different.

To quickly answer your question, your CPU will not be a problem.

Harley Quin,

This is because the Core 2 Duos do more work per cycle than a Pentium 4 does. So kind of like how an Athlon 64 at 1.8GHz (A64 3000+) is as fast as a Pentium 4 at 3.0GHz, a Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz is more like a 3.0 P4... per core. The Core 2 Duo architecture rocks.

 

Thanks for these answers, they help me a lot.

 

when i first got into PC gaming this kept catching me out, i wonder when they wil ldecide to start using dual cores as the yardstick?

 

I played Fallout 3, and Bioshock, without lagg though on minimum settings, on a Geforce 7600 go 512 mb, a 1.46 Ghz Pentium M 410 (single core) and 2GB ram.

So you can't simply judge it based on the Ghz, there are other important things. My advice is to check the CPUmark. Should give a fair estimate what is better and what is worse, for what application.

 

ok, just to let you know, we both have the same CPU technically "C2D 2ghz" and when running the game and blowing stuff up and going on killing Sprees, the CPU Usage never gone above 70%, so, be happy