I have 83 purified water in my inventory. 203 stimpacks. Countless specialty foods that regen HP. The game needs a hardcore mode badly, even on highest difficulty setting.
It's up to your upgrade cycle. I don't think a 2500k would have too much difficulty with the game, nor will your vid card. I'm on Z97, 4690k, DDR3 2133 and GTX970 and it performs well.
It's a better game than Skyrim overall. I still thought the main quest was pretty bad, though. Coming from some of the worst story writing to something very average is kinda an achievement.
I guess never feeling like my character was my character put a damper on how much I was invested into...
The game will tell you when you're about to piss off another faction. Until then, you can quest with all of them.
Pointless? No. Sometimes you have to pick a side in RPG's.