After major issues over the last year or so trying to play FO3 GOTY on a top of the line quad core, win 7 64 bit machine, i have decided the only way to fix this is to buy or build an outdated, older computer to play FO3 on.

I have tried every fix in the book, every mod, every patch, every .ini fix, every compatibility setting, everything including reverting back to vanilla, uninstalling and reinstalling dozens of times, all to no avil. I have gotten maybe 1 hour into the game ever.....

I am done trying to fix this on my current machine.

If anyone out there has a recommendation on a build that will run it at the highest settings i am all ears.

Couple of questions i have. (only one really)
Should i stick with a dual core CPU? Possibly a socket 775?

I am an Intel man, i am not interested in an AMD CPU.
I currently have a older Radeon 5450 64 bit graphics card taken out of an older XP machine that i was told ran FO3 back in the day but would rather step it up a notch to the 256 bit, 1GB Radeon 6870 sitting around not being used atm.

I plan on win xp or vista 32 bit OS, 4 GB DDR2 memory, and a 120 GB SSD.

I am not a pro computer builder by any means, but do have some experience building a few systems in the past for my personal use. (including this i5 machine i currently use for Skyrim. (and it runs flawlessly.)

On a final note, i want to be able to run it at the highest possible settings with a single 256 bit graphics card. (Radeon 6870, Currently running a 6950 on the i5)
Any recommendations are appreciated.

Please do not try to tell me how to fix this on the current machine, i have heard it all, tried it all, it simply will not run more than a few minutes on the current OS, and i will not downgrade this machine with an older OS (although i have been giving a dual boot OS a lot of thought)

Thank you in advance for your time

You don't need to buy a new PC just yet: First try to get a new OS.

Windows 7 was released after Fallout 3, and it was known to have... issues with it shortly after Win 7's release. If you partition your Harddrive and get XP or Vista installed on it (or downgrade completely from Win 7) It'll likely solve your issues. Unless you tried that already and it didn't work.

If that doesn't work (and you didn't completely downgrade,) you should still have at least 3-4 installs allowed with the downgraded OS, so you don't have to spend another $80 for the new PC.