- Jun 23, 2001
- 27,730
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Got a little bored last night, and wiped one of my test machines. Its an Inspiron 531, an A64X2 2.1Ghz with 2GB of RAM and a Radeon 4350 512MB. Since its a Dell desktop and I happen to have 'acquired' several Dell OS disks, I installed XP Pro on it. Installed and updated everything to the most current drivers available, installed Steam and downloaded Fallout 3.
Under my machine machine, a Windows 7 64bit machine, FO3 is an unstable POS and never stays up for more than 15 minutes without a crash to the desktop. But, my E8500 and 4870 have the processing power to run it at maximum settings with impunity.
I did not expect the Inspiron 531 to run FO3 very well, but I was pleasantly surprised. The game's autodetect function after install set it to run at 1280x720, with high quality settings, even 4x AA and 8 sample anisotropic. I backed off the AA to zero, but left all the other settings as they were. The game is mostly playable, the frame rate drops into a jittering state during large explosions and when entering large new areas, but it catches up before too long. Not too shabby.
The passively cooled Radeon 4350 gets pretty toasty, and the systems fans consistently ramp up every few minutes.
The game, however, is stable. Or seems to be anyway, so long as you don't alt-tab out. If I can pick up a 5600+ and a slightly better card, the game should be fully playable on this box, I would think.
Just sharing.
Edit -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_3#Bethesda_Softworks <--- System requirements. The Inspiron 531 is barely skirting the minimum requirements. Guess they are pretty realistic.
Under my machine machine, a Windows 7 64bit machine, FO3 is an unstable POS and never stays up for more than 15 minutes without a crash to the desktop. But, my E8500 and 4870 have the processing power to run it at maximum settings with impunity.
I did not expect the Inspiron 531 to run FO3 very well, but I was pleasantly surprised. The game's autodetect function after install set it to run at 1280x720, with high quality settings, even 4x AA and 8 sample anisotropic. I backed off the AA to zero, but left all the other settings as they were. The game is mostly playable, the frame rate drops into a jittering state during large explosions and when entering large new areas, but it catches up before too long. Not too shabby.
The passively cooled Radeon 4350 gets pretty toasty, and the systems fans consistently ramp up every few minutes.
The game, however, is stable. Or seems to be anyway, so long as you don't alt-tab out. If I can pick up a 5600+ and a slightly better card, the game should be fully playable on this box, I would think.
Just sharing.
Edit -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_3#Bethesda_Softworks <--- System requirements. The Inspiron 531 is barely skirting the minimum requirements. Guess they are pretty realistic.
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