Well, I may have to bump up my dual-core.. but I was planning on getting a quad soon anyways, so.. I might as well wait 'til after I get that.

Get the Intel Q66000 at 2.4GHz, you can overclock it to 3.00GHz.

Hmm, by the looks of things over at that forum the article comes from, what they meant by processor type from intel is only the old P4's (northwood and prescott). Usually, if the game requires a newer chip, they will label beside it Core 2 Duo or Pentium D or dual core, something like that. I haven't seen a game yet that doesn't do it. Though I do find the recommended settings a little weird in the CPU department, only a .2 Ghz bump up in requirements? Usually, you see a larger jump there or a move to newer hardware (Recommended: Pentium D 3.0 Ghz or Core 2 2.2 Ghz, something like that).

Just a little help for people running older hardware who might want to upgrade their specs to play some newer games.
- If you are still using an AGP bus type, the best cards you can get for it right now are the 512 MB HD 3850s from AMD/ATI and it's partners. They might be overkill for most systems still using AGP, but they are the best. Another option is to find an x1950 Pro, again from ATI/AMD. A year or so older tech, but they shouldn't cost as much now if you can find one (they're drying up quickly). Apparently, SM 2.0 cards don't work with Mass Effect (not officially confirmed, and I'm sure the UE3 can use SM2.0). So, might be worth upgrading.
- Generally, if you are looking for more RAM, DDR2 is the cheapest, so if your motherboard takes it, go with it for the upgrade. If you are running older DDR RAM, well, it might not be worth the upgrade, since I can never seem to find it on sale anywhere. I've seen 4 gigs of DDR2 go for $80 CDN (or less, and it's the good stuff), and 2 Gigs of DDR go for like 130 dollars? WTF eh? If you don't already have at least a gig of DDR in your system, might be worth getting a new motherboard and a new CPU.
- If you are an afformentioned DDR user, is might be worth moving to a new motherboard. There are some motherboard manufacturers that make boards that can accept some of your older parts if need. For example, if you wanted to move to Core 2 Duo, but you have two gigs of DDR in two sticks and you have a kick ass AGP card, check out AsRocks line of motherboards, they have a few that could help out. Or, if you have a good Pentium D chip, but want to ditch everything else, pretty much any new socket 775 motherboard will take that older chip. So, you could pair your pentium D with some newer DDR-2 and a PCIe based card of your choice.

Have you even played Mass Effect on the 360? I'm on my 4th playthrough and have had little problems other than the texture pop-ins and I crashed on me once when I was exploring the Citadel. Like ok this is the Open Zone but please have some truth in your statements.

"unplayable" ? Oh yeah kinda like the DLC PS3 CoD4 maps.

Im not surprised that the game doesn't need a powerful CPU. RAM and GPU are much more important to most games then the CPU. I do think that any computer game player should be using a Duo Core machine but an entry level Duo Core machine with 2 - 3 gigs of RAM and a mid range GPU should be fine with most computer games out.

A great PC build would be

Pretty much any Core 2 Duo or AMD X2
8800GT
3 Gigs RAM

Their highest rated, best remembered, socially loved franchise... and they have small team working on it for the past 2- 3 years?

Absolute garbage company along side all the heads that made Andromeda.

Maybe Saudi Arabia make something out of this.

overall if they could get CDPR and quadratic dream to help them make the game that would give me hope for the game

Still riding off the coat tails of the original staff from Bioware that have long since moved on.