The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3 makes the current state of the worldwide economy look about as pleasant as apple pie. Bethesda rendered the bleakness of a nuclear bomb-ravaged Washington DC with the perfect amount of despair and, given the nature of the franchise, humor. From the moment you step out of Vault 101, you want to explore every single bombed-out shack and collapsed building. The radioactive wasteland is filled with incredible detail, and the long draw distances practically beg you to wander around by giving you so many landmarks to march towards. Fallout 3 is based on the Oblivion graphics engine, but runs much better than Oblivion and with greater detail. However, even with the engine performance improvements, you'll most likely need to upgrade a system component or two if you want the game to run at maximum quality settings.
We tested Fallout 3 by running through the area outside of the Jefferson Memorial and Rivet City. The region has long draw distances, nearby water reflections, and plenty of action from supermutants. Our final result was the average of three 40-second runs.
Settings
Fallout 3 has a ton of settings but none that single-handedly destroy performance. Each setting takes an almost imperceptible bite, but when combined the game slows to a crawl. Think of it as the death by a thousand pixels.
Video Cards
Long draw distances, copious amounts of antialiasing, and high resolutions make Fallout 3 look amazing. Of course, you're going to need a decent amount of pixel-pushing power to get Fallout 3 running maxed out. We went through almost 20 video cards to help you determine what's enough.
CPU
To put Fallout 3 to the test, we pulled out all our chips, ranging from quad cores down to Pentium 4s, to see how the game scales. As it turns out, as long as you have any Core 2-based CPU, you're going to be fine. Anything less and you might want to consider upgrading.
Memory
Fallout 3 requires 1GB of RAM to run in Windows XP and 2GB to run in Windows Vista. We loaded up our system with 1, 2, and 3GB of RAM to determine the sweet spot.
Systems
Fallout 3's minimum requirements call for a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, 1GBof RAM, and a GeForce 6800-class video card. We were able to get the game to run on the aforementioned system, but performance wasn't great. The game becomes unplayable as soon as you venture outside of the lowest image-quality and resolution settings. If you want to actually play the game, you might want to get something a bit more powerful. The recommended system, a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz CPU with a GeForce 8800 GT and 2GB of RAM, ran the game perfectly at high resolutions and with high image-quality settings. Our custom high-end system packed with a 3.2GHz quad core and a Radeon 4870X2 didn't have any problems at all either.
System Performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
System Setup:
High-End System: Intel Core2 QX9650, eVGA 780i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: Radeon 4870X2, beta Catalyst HotFix 70517.
Recommended System: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz, eVGA 680i, 2GB Corsair XMS Memory (1GBx2), 750GB Seagate 7200.11 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows Vista 32-bit SP1. Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GT, beta Nvidia ForceWare 180.42.
Minimum System: Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz, Asus P4C800, 1GB Corsair XMS Memory, Seagate 160GB 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2. Graphics Card: GeForce 6800, Nvidia Forceware 180.42.
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dogmavskarma posted Nov 30, 2008 7:09 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)