Game Skyrim Forum

Hello, i am looking at buying a laptop. it has a 2.10Ghz processor is there anyway on this earth that it could run fallout 3 on its lowest possible settings?

also the processor is a AMD ATHLON II DUAL CORE P320 (2.10Ghz) but on the advert is it says AMD ATHLON II X2 DUAL CORE P320 (2.10Ghz) now does the fact that there is a X2 mean that there is actually more Ghz of processing speed? it might seem a stupid question i know but im not very computer savvy.

Does anyone know what F3 is like running on Windows 7 Premium is like? i know for Vista you need 2gb of ram is it the same for 7?

Thank you for your help.

I think the X2 means 2 cores in the Processor, which makes the Processor more efficient but you won't get more Processing speed but it helps to manage the workload. What graphics does the laptop have?

It has an ATI RADEON HD 4250 (256MB) i have searched around and aparantly that can handle F3 but again i could be wrong

also the RAM is 2gb DDR3

and it has a Multi format dual layer Cd/DVD drive

again i dont care even if its just on the lowest possible settings it would just be nice to play it on PC

and if i cant play it that would be a shame but i cant afford much else at the minute guess i'd just have to wait for enough money to buy a desktop.

You might just be able to play it, I'm not familiar with the Athlon but you would be able to run it fine if you had 2.2GHz. So you should be able to play it at 20FPS with Low settings with no problem.

But I strongly recommend a desktop! If you already have one upgrade it!

CPU speed doesnt matter when comparing different CPU architecture . That CPU is well above the minimum/recommended CPU specs. The x2/x3/x4/x6 is how many cores it has. The bigger problem I see here is the video chipset, the ATI Radeon HD 4250 will only play the game at about low settings for decent FPS. I would say 2GB of RAM for Vista/7 is good enough but really more the better, although the OS comes into play when passing 3GB.

Sorry OP about the CPU comment, I thought the CPU sys req was for the Core 2 Duo (but it was Pentium :facepalm: )

its fine thanks for your help guys. so your saying i would most likeley be able to run it on the lowest settings? thats fine by me just being able to play on pc would be nice. its also a laptop for colege so thats why im not getting a desktop so i can take it with me to college because of how far i live from the college (about 20 mins) if i have free lessons with nothing to do i'd rather sit and playa game for an hour and a half than waste petrol going home.


So the lowest settings? would that be possible? infact i can link you to the laptop itself http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5083338/c_1/1%7Ccategory_root%7COffice,+PCs+and+phones%7C14418968/c_2/3%7Ccat_15701344%7CLaptops+and+Netbooks%7C16164797.htm?_$ja=tsid:11527%7Ccc:%7Cprd:5083338%7Ccat:office%2C+pcs+%26+phones+%3E+laptops+and+netbooks+%3E+laptops for some reason it dosn't have the X2 on the processor but it is there just not listed on the website like it is the book.

Your CPU is fine but 256 meg of VRAM is quite low for a game like Fallout. For any games these days actually. You should have at least 512 for most of the new games out there, preferably 1 gig. And the 4250 is on the low end for that series. So you can probably run the game but at very low graphic settings, and you'll probably still have to put up with alot of stuttering as you games swaps textures.

so if i could get a better graphics card it would be alot better? how can you upgrade a grapics card on your laptop? or is that not even worth doing? but i do not even know if that feesable.

i have seen what the game looks like at its lowest grapics settings and i dont think its that bad. so you think/know i will get stuttering?

Upgrading the GPU in a laptop is 99.98% impossible, if you have one of the few that allow the upgrade to take place you would know it. (Generally a high end gaming laptop originally). At low settings you should get playable enough FPS. You will always encounter stutter in Fallout/Oblivion due to its odd way of loading the game from the HDD to the GPU/CPU since there would not be enough RAM to load the entire Wasteland into and it cannot predict what you will do next. High speed hard drives (10,000RPM) and SSDs help to minimize the stutter. That laptop probably has a slower 5400RPM drive, which paired with the slow GPU will cause a bit more stutter then I would generally like personally.

The game will run on low settings with minimal lag. But it will always be there when traveling. What I would recommend (and most others on this board who frequent these threads). Buy a cheap laptop for college and work related stuff. Then spend a bit more on a nice gaming desktop. Desktops are upgradable and are much more powerful then a laptop for the same price. (Generally speaking of course).

well all i can do is try then thanks for your help everyone

The problem will be made worse because of your low VRAM. Any textures and meshes the game needs will be stored there until there's no more room to hold anything new, then the video card will dump what the game thinks you don't need in order to load new graphics. Because you only have 256 meg of VRAM, this will happen more often than it would if you had a card with 1 gig of VRAM. Many of the textures of the game are quite large so it won't take long for your VRAM to fill up, which means you'll be doing alot of swapping of your graphics files.

Thats really a non-issue. 512 is more then enough for NMC's Texture pack, and that is like 2x the file space of the default textures, so 256 is just fine for vanilla textures. The biggest source of lag will come from the 5400RPM hard drive.

You could argue how much Ram and Vram you could use, but it comes down to what is actually needed to run the game. 256 is more then enough for the graphics settings he will be running at. If you really want proof of this, just keep in mind that an XBox plays at just under mid settings and only has 512 of total memory, where as the laptop the OP is looking at has 256 dedicated Vram as well as 2GB system Ram

im kinda keeping along with what you guys are saying lol as i said im not very computer savvy so long as its playable that is good enough for me regardless of wheather its the lowest settings or not (most likeley, infact no definantley will be lol)

It comes down to how much stuttering you're willing to put up with. Certainly 256 will be enough to run the game, but not smoothly. It will be stuttering far more often that a 512 card would, and the pause will last longer. As for NMC's textures, yes 512 is enough but here again you'll have to put up with alot of stuttering as the textures get swapped out. NMC is much the same as QTP3 is for Oblivion, and I personally found the stuttering I had to endure on my 512 card with those textures to be intolerable. I won't even attempt NMC now because of my experience with QTP3.

My previous graphics card was an 8800GT 512MB. It ran NMC's fairly smooth. Same system as listed in sig. Also used QTP3R.

256 Vram and 2GB of Ram at the settings the OP is going to be able to play at, the lag is 80% going to be the hard drive seek times.

what dies that mean? har drive seek times?

Hard drive seek times is the time it takes for the hard drive to pick up the rotating spindle and go to the next section of data that needs to be read. Slower hard drives (5400RPM) have slower seek times then say a 10,000RPM drive.

Yes, that's true. But the game will be accessing the hard drive more often because a 256 meg card can't store as many textures as a 512 meg can. It will need to swap them more often, resulting in more stuttering when the new texture is being loaded from the hard drive. I also have an 8800GT and I certainly noticed alot more stuttering when using QTP3, even the Redimized version, than I did with just the stock textures. Not only did it happen more often, but the lag was longer when it occurred. Which is why I haven't bothered with the NMC textures. I'd rather have smoother performance than hi-test graphics. There was a thread here awhile back where someone posted a You Tube video which showed his game almost grinding to a halt at times due to stuttering, and he was looking for help trying to fix the problem. After he removed the NMC textures his game played smoothly again.

another stupid question what is QTP3 and NMC texture's?

also would having mods impact the performance? or would it depend on the mods?

First mod you should get is this http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8886
My computer has very little ram 1.5gb, and that mod has done a great job of reducing the stuttering. I think it would help you out a lot.

ahh thank you you see this laptop is for my 19th birthday so i might not even be getting it but if i do i will definantley get this mod there is a high chance i will get it though

Those are both third party hi-res texture replacers. QTP3 is for Oblivion and NMC is for Fallout. The files are pretty much double the size of the default textures so they're not something you'd want to be looking at with that card.



It will depend on the mod. Some will impact your performance, some won't. And it also depends on what they change in the game. Some will make more demands on your CPU rather than your video card. You shouldn't have too much problem on that score as that CPU is good enough for this game. You'll just have to be careful not to get too many mods that add or alter graphics.

thanks for the info. finally it looks like i'll be able to enjoy some modding action