So I installed, and played. Video looks great. My old system P4 2.6 is good enough to run High Quality (with a 512MB ATI Radeon 3600 series video card). Audio...... not so much. NPCs do not speak (unless I press ESC immediately after initiating dialogue) and the sound effects seem to queue up and then play all at once in a smorgasbord of ear-shattering noise each time I hit TAB or ESC. Music works fine.... except the radio. Any ideas? I have a SoundBlaster Live! Value card, and it is fully up-to-date. I've checked all the came config & steam config options, nothing for audio, only volume control.

You are below the minimum requirements. It wants a minimum of a 2Ghz duel CORE class processor. A 2.4Ghz Pentium4 is equivalent to a 900Mhz CORE class processor.

Actually, I really do suspect that the P4 in question would probably work, after all, if the OP had an X-Fi Titanium, or another brand audio system that included its own decoding processor. The sounds that the P4 must decode for an onboard audio chip are too much for it.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1123068-what-that-dxdiag-thing-includes/