Why doe these games have the highest requirements on GoG?
I've got a
Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 (1.4 GHz, 800 MHz)
Intel GMA 4500MHD
2 GB RAM
I figure I should be able to run it as I saw lower requirements (much lower elsewhere for both games) but I do want to be careful as I did just burn $8 on TF2 (which ran well as long as other people weren't on screen).

Intel onboard graphics chipset won't really it cut it for anything but the very old games. You might well struggle with GC, to be honest and I'd bet you will with GC2. Sorry, mate.

You seriously tried to play TF2 with onboard graphics? Get a dedicated GPU if you want to play games well.
As for this site's requirement specifications, they pretty much standardise them across all the games (possibly because those are the specs of their lowest spec machine maybe? Only GOG could tell us that) but they are altered slightly to get them working on modern systems, so the specs stated are more like modern system specs.

The majority of that is vista's specs, they have to take into account OS and the game when stating the specs and its the OS that demands the most, which dictates the lowest required specs they put on their site. At least I think this is how it was explained by on of the guys at GOG last time this question cropped up, should be a post about with it but I forget where.

Plus, you need to remember that this is a large-scale RTS. That means you're going to be looking at large map full of textured objects covered in little soldier-people that all have their own animations and special effects. And that's if you don't consider all the exploding that'll be going on. Also, the GC games have a rotatable camera and a long draw distance. You can hold your camera parallel to the ground and see for miles. All things considered, that's a lot more pixels to process than you'd have to deal with for another type of game.
All of these factors combine to make a game that has fairly high graphics requirements for the time in which it was made. My experience is that most RTS games are like that.

I remember loading the demo of this game up for the first time and being amazed that they reflected the sky with these planets and stars into the waters surface.

Hey man. Hate to hear that you're having trouble but I can think right off the problem of your system. First, the 1.4GHz CPU. That is painfully slow. my friend has a year 2000 Dell that has a 1.6, and my 8 year old gaming PC has an AMD 2.1. That means your PC is severely limited in choice of games past 2001. Next up is the built-in graphics. If possible I or someone else can help you find a $20-$30 video card and you could easily double your game performance but you would need to let us know what kind of PC you have so we can figure out what kind of video card you can support. Lastly, are you running Windows XP or Vista?

I'm playing Ground Control 2 on my netbook with all the graphics maxed out except for the shadows. It's only got 1.6 Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and an onboard graphics chipset. It runs really smoothly too.

Don't compare laptop onboard graphic cards to PC Mainboard graphic cards.
It's not even in same league.

PC mainboards cards are there only to display simple things like internet without using graphic card


Also 2010 Atom 1,4 cpu is 2-4 times faster than 2001 AMD intel 1,4 cpu..

Not to completely disregard the post above me, but I'm also playing on laptop integrated graphics (x3100; 965GM i think) and getting very playable performance (at medium settings) in GC2.

Absurdly, GC1 is giving me some performance trouble. Doesn't seem to be programmed as well.

Games usually don't scale well on those pathetic intel IGPs...most games that would normally play on very low end systems wouldn't even play on those. You might want to check out 3d anaylzer if you have sufficent ram that is, otherwise your our out of luck.

I reckon that AMD fusion makes for a far better choice for low end or HTPC type systems .