But I can run it on high at 1680x1050, with 8x AA with a spec nowhere near that on a 2 year old rig which wasn't exactly bleeding edge to begin with.

Also, you can pick up a quad core processor for around £100 these days. A 9800GT will cost about the same or a 4850 around £75.

Haven't quad core processors been out since early 2007? It seems pretty predictable that they are recommended over 2 years later. The only thing I find funny here is how much people were downplaying the usefulness of a quad core for gaming, even somewhat recently.

To be fair they're only better if a game/ application has been written to take advantage of them, same goes for dual core processors. I'd be surprised if anything recent wasn't optimised for mutli-threading though, so they're a damn good bet for future proofing. I wish I'd spent an extra £20 and gone for a Q6600 when I bought mine, but never mind the E6750 is more than up to it.

If I recall, there are only a handful of games that support Quad Cores (GTAIV and Far Cry 2 off the top of my head).

They're already wonderful for doing stuff like video editing, it's time for video games to get in bed with the quad cores.

Yep, it was between a $169 e8400 or a $199 q6600 when I was building my computer. Glad I sprung for the q6600.

I think Valve's Source engine does these days, and I'd imagine the Unreal and latest iD engines would do so as well.

That's the one thing I regret about my PC. The G0 stepping Q6600's an overclocking dream by all accounts as well.

Those are definitely not massive specs. They are saying that any multi-core processor is enough to play the game, even the lowest of the lowest Pentium D. That also means that a strong single core processor will be able to play the game.

The same goes for the recommended quad-core - any strong dual-core that beats the lowest quad-core will be enough to play it on recommended settings.

The only bad thing I can see in the specs is the recommended GPU.

All in all, pretty low specs (only 512mb RAM needed?! wowzers)

Not so bad when you consider the recommended is really only that high due to the 3D features the PC version will offer. They should put out a recommended set of specs without utilizing the 3D feature. It would be 2 core with a noticeably smaller GPU I'd bet.