Why does Fallout 2 (PC) have such high CPU usage?

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MurderousMincePie

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Mar 29, 2013
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I'm quite confused as to why Fallout 2 uses 25% of my CPU when it's minimum requirements are an intel CPU running at around 90MHz. My CPU isn't the greatest thing in the world but surely it can run a game that's over ten years old. Is anyone else getting similar results when running the game on Windows 7?
 
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To give a slightly better explanation on what gamerk316 said, that's because Fallout 2 is a 16bit-era game which originally ran on MS-DOS.
Nowadays, 64bit CPUs completely lack the instruction sets used for 16bit apps, and thus machine emulators are needed to play such games.
Most re-sellers putting these games on sale usually bundle the products with with a DOS emulator, which is mainly a slightly per-game customized DOSBox version (google for it, it's pretty easy to find).

As a matter of fact, an emulator is mostly a software (can be hardware too, in rare cases) which tries to simulate the functions of an older, unsupported machine on a more powerful/modern machine, while always trying to closely resemble the original functioning by...
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Vynavill

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To give a slightly better explanation on what gamerk316 said, that's because Fallout 2 is a 16bit-era game which originally ran on MS-DOS.
Nowadays, 64bit CPUs completely lack the instruction sets used for 16bit apps, and thus machine emulators are needed to play such games.
Most re-sellers putting these games on sale usually bundle the products with with a DOS emulator, which is mainly a slightly per-game customized DOSBox version (google for it, it's pretty easy to find).

As a matter of fact, an emulator is mostly a software (can be hardware too, in rare cases) which tries to simulate the functions of an older, unsupported machine on a more powerful/modern machine, while always trying to closely resemble the original functioning by translating the original instructions. If, for example, you tried to emulate a dual-core system on a quad-core one, you would always have a maximum CPU load of 50% and nothing more.
This brings us to why you see 25% CPU usage, and I'm prepared to bet you either have a dual-core CPU with HyperThreading or a quad-core CPU :p
 
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MurderousMincePie

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Mar 29, 2013
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That makes a lot of sense because the CPU always sticks at 25% and never changes. In case you were wondering I have an old 1156 dual core with hyper-threading so yeah your prediction was right! This is actually the first fallout game I've ever played (I wanted to experience what the originals were like before diving in to the 'modern' ones). One day I'm going to have to make some form of DOS machine because I've found myself playing more older games than the latest ones :p.

Thanks for your explanation.
 
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