First, I'm not sure if I should buy the steam or retail version. Are they different, or are they like the Half Life games, which can run only through steam?

Second, I couldn't find the official minimum requirements, will my PC be able to handle it?

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (single core)
GeForce 8800GT
4 GB RAM
Running WinXP

I bought it on release day and have been begging Steam for my money back ever since. If I were you, I'd get the retail version, then at least you'll be able to get store credit.

My system is an intel i7 2.66, quad core, with a 330M and 8 gigs of ram, and it's really, really slow for me. I can only get it to run ok after doing this directx dll hack everyone has been talking about on the forums and dropping quality to low. So if I had to guess, I'd say you won't have a good time with the system you're running there.

But who knows. People with similar specs to mine are running it at ultra without problem. It's a total crap shoot.

Same thing. You need Steam to run the game. The disk will install it faster than you can download/install it through Steam so I'd recommend that. It's what I did. (Plus I do not have a credit card and refuse to use PayPal.)

If you don't mind low-medium settings at a lower resolution it should work. It will depend on what you find acceptable.

Did you play Fallout 3? Expect about the same if you did. (Though you may need the "http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1123822-potential-fix-for-npc-slowdown/" to get the same FPS.)

Thank you for the replies.

Fallout 3 runs pretty well for me at medium settings, does that mean NV will run just as well?

str1cken, what operating system are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?