system specs to play il-2 smoothly at 2560*1600?

[llama_thumper]

Hi guys,

Am doing an upgrade to an i7 based motherboard and would like to find out whether anyone of you is playing at 2560*1600 resolution and what FPS you get with what system. I would like to have a smooth system (with highest detail levels, in particular water) even on the much more detailed maps like Slovakia, where currently I slow to a crawling 15 FPS, and even less on landing/take-off (not to speak of modded maps with UP2.0m). The lowest I can do is 1920*1200, but anything below that looks crap on a 30inch monitor.

I have an 8800GTX which I plan to keep (and upgrade later), but am looking forward to dumping my Pentium D805 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-41-ghz-cores,1253.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-41-ghz-cores,1253.html)) which runs at an overclocked 3.2ghz, but still can't handle it and looks to be the bottleneck.

[cmirko]

get the i7 that has the fastest turbo mode - il2 isn't very good with multicore cpu's....

as for videocard - anything of "new" generation will do fine - ati 58xx or nvidia 280+....

[Flanker35M]

S!

Intel or AMD as CPU will do fine. As cmirko said, IL2 is not multicore optimized so even a dual core would do just fine. As of graphics cards..well..I hate to say this but IL2 is "nvidialized" and ATI has trouble with it. I have got IL2 to run on my 5870HD, but after a lot of tinkering. The green team card runs IL2 easier, even there is some tinkering too.

[Flyby]

don't know if this helps, but I think you have more of a problem with graphics memory than with processor ghz. but yeah, IL2 will only use one core so the more ghz the better. follow this link to Hard_OCP. there is a list of graphics cards for you to review. the new ATi cards are there, but may I suggest you look at the ATi 4890 too? Of course it depends on your wallet. any card you check out here will also show the competition's results to. Most cards there seem to be tested (also) at 25x12 resolution so you should be able to compare easily. use the drop-down menu to view results for specific games. here ya go: http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/gpu_video_cards/
now be sure to tell us all what you decide to go with. ;)
Flyby out
ps be sure to look at the test system being used for these graphics cards. it may provide a nice idea for a system upgrade too. :)

[Untamo]

I have a 30" monitor, Intel dualcore e6600 @ 2.88GHz, 2G of ram, nvidiot 8800GT, WinXp. While testing with the 2560*1600 resolution and highest details levels, the fps rate was manageable / playable, not great .. avg. of maybe 40fps. Bad fps over cities and such as expected.

Offtopic:
But the reason I am NOT using the full native resolution is that the physical size of one pixel (read: "enemy plane" :) ) is just too small for my eyes. Hence I use the 75% of the native which happens to be the 1920*1200. Enemies are now a bigger blob of pixels and this enhances the detection rate by 100000% (numbers calculated with the fully scientific Stetson-Harrison -method ;) ). Waste of resolution, I know, but enemy detection is more important to me than few wasted pixels.

[llama_thumper]

cheers thanks guys for all the feedback.

[ytareh]

I have a 30" Dell monitor but very rarely play IL2 at above 1024x768 as you simply CAN NOT see the enemy dots .PC is GTX295/E8500 at 4-4.2GHz/4GHz RAM /Win 7 64 bit .Depending on amount of AA/AF /mods /settings etc etc FPS can vary from very high to rather low .CPU speed is always going to have biggest effect on IL2 performance ,I wouldnt be so concerned atbout gpu ram once around /above 1k...