Try out the demo. It's still being given out through Steam. That's the best way to find out.

Sounds like you need a complete system overhaul. It's reached the point where you can upgrade with the ultra low end Atom based machines! Save your gaming money, and put it towards a new computer.

Ugh I hated DOW II Beta, I think they totally ruined it.  They changed from 11 races to 4, added GFWL, and lowered the ammount of soldiers.  They have a total of 7 maps, not 2v2 maps as well.  Graphics are nice, I'll give them that. 

I'm not getting the game.  Starcraft II, Demigod, and Empire: Total War are on my list however.

-Phalnax

To be fair, it took the main game plus several expansions to get to 11 races offered.

I'm playing DoW2 now and enjoying it.  It's different from 1, but with the smaller number of squads, I'm actually enjoyijng more what they can do, and the kill animations, much more than the first.  To each their own, I can understand that there will be those that don't like this change.  Interestingly, and I haven't played the beta, so I may be wrong, the gameplay seems a bit like what Demigod has on offer, ie. one powerful unit, with limited other units.

Oh, and I'm really mostly single player with this game.

Soul Storm wasn't made by Relic

I know it took them 3 expansion packs to get 11 races.  Who cares about SoB and Dark Eldar, they were a waste, but the others were good.  And they shouldve been in it.  Maybe down the line I may get it, but for now I won't...

Any time you're that far under the minimum system requirements, you can't expect a game to run well at all, even on minimum settings.   I'd say save your money towards a new PC.  You're going to run into more and more games you can't play on your current PC.

I got the game, my quick review is: The solo campain is 50/50, there is little strategy, but, I love the level-up stuff in between missions.  There's so much diversity and possibilites when you level up your squads.  But the solo campain is more like a FPS and RPG combined.

The scirmishes are where it's at, but NO base building; zero; nada. But it only comes with 7 maps total and NO 2v2 maps, only 1v1 or 3v3     You start with one "base", and units are built/reinforced there.  It's micro intensive, and since they totally ripped the game speed adjustments out of the game (game speed adjustment was in the first game, and something that made the game playable for my other friends, who now won't go near DoW2) you'll really have to be able to click fast.  You can pay to upgrade your one base up to two times, allowing more powerful sets of units.  All units you produce can be upgraded too, with a variety of weapons/armor/equipment.

There is a Squad cap (just like the ship cap in Sins), so you won't be spamming units, and since units level up, keeping your units alive is an importnat strategy (you can loose all but one guy from your squad, and still "reinforce" them to full again, keeping all your upgrades and level-up abilites).  You will REALLY get attached to your small army, and feel the loss when one dies.

As for the GFWL, it's awful, and the game SAYS you can play via lan, but, since I can't install it on my other two computers here (due to steam) I say that was almost an outright lie on the games behalf.  I would not have purchesed DowII had I know about Steams "big brother"ish restrictions.

Space Marines are tough, but I still picture thousands of people in the battles depicted in the lore (the Heresy involved thousands of Space Marines, I'm talking about thousands of IG and heretics and stuff).

Fluff wise, both DoW and DoW II FAIL TEH EMPRA

DoW - SPESS MEHRNES die too fast (and chaos marines are squishier than regular marines, wtf)

DoW II - too few of any race....

DOWII caters to a different crowd. To me it works since the 15-20 min games fit nicely into the space between times where i want to play grand strategy (total war games or SOASE) or do my work.

A good 2 thumbs up for me.

In response to the OP, if you do not meet the minimum requirements, you will not be able to run the game effectively.  Both my friend and I have computers that are well above the stated requirements, and even then it still slows down noticeably.  It's quite rediculous really.  There's barely anything going on in the SP game at any one time to warrent it hogging the system resources.

Relic has that bug fixed for a time now as stated in their forums... just waiting for those GFWL guys to certificate it. Why cannot they try to do it in less than their standard 2 weeks for a case so serious as this? Ask GFWL. 

I'm enjoying the wargear collecting and assigning it to squads far more than the actual combat in the campaign.  Fortunately, I didn't buy it for the SP, but because I found the MP beta pretty enjoyable.  Yes, the pop-cap bug is still present, but Relic has been vocal that they have a fix hurrying through QA.  Pretty embarrassing launch bug, but I'm hopeful they'll have it cleared up soon.

As for the shortness of the matches, that was what actually drew me to it.  In 3v3 when your team has been holding the map for a long time, why would you want to hold it even longer?  The game's dynamic is indicating which team is winning and the other side has a good chance to come back from a loss with skilled play.  I'm very impressed by the handful of units strategy Relic took where you have to be very careful how you deploy your troops or even hardened infantry like Space Marines will get vaporized.  While I liked Dawn of War a lot, it often felt from mid-game on all you were doing was right-clicking reinforce and smashing two seas of models against one another.  Repeat ad nauseam.  That wasn't the case for skilled players in 1v1 I know, but it's what the majority of team games turned into.