Installing multi copies and versions and Reflections off canopy's a treat
 

Two things,

I was seeing little improvement with new patch until I bit the bullet and did complete fresh install. I also moved my game onto my ssd.

Love the glints of light off the canopy of targets as I fly around them.

1. Backup your .ini files in your (non steam) install.
2. Go to steam, right click on game and delete.
3. Install again(up to 3 hours)
4. Now once installed, start game once. Then stop Game and then copy or zip up both the steam and the my documents install, so u have a vanilla install backup. Save these two files somewhere.
5. If u want just il2 on your ssd and all steam games on normal hard drive. Big fps improvement. Do this. Copy the steam 1c il2 strumvic folder with the launcher.exe in it to your Ssd drive. Add the patch number to the folder name so u know which patch it is.
6. Copy the new patch into this new folder to update it and make a shortcut of the launcher.exe to desktop

As long as steam is running before clicking launcher exe. You will now have a copy running on ssd and a vanilla safe for fast re-installs.

As advised I have turned Down effects to medium and now got great fps. Avg 85 and max 135 and min 54. No stutter. Much much much better now.

Best thing any new patches will now take 2min for re-install rather then 3 hours. And switching between versions is just dependent on which shortcut I click

Hope this helps some.

For installing steam games to an SSD, steammover is a great tool. It utilizes system links to move files from one drive to another while leaving "shortcuts" in the original location so programs can still read it from its original location.

All the benefits of installing on an SSD without tedious steps or misdirected programs. You can also easily swap different games on/off your ssd if you don't have much space to spare.

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover/

Don't forget about Steam's backup feature, that way you won't need to re-download the whole game if you would like to re-install, or install another copy.

Trying it! I got Win7 on an Samsung 830 256GB SSD! Fingers crossed!

hc_wolf, do you still see sun-glints with effects to medium?
I love the glinting, but didn't want to turn down fx in case it meant losing them....

i dont want be happy to early but performance seems to be better! I was able to fly in Formation with 8 110 offline attacking 8 Blenheims with Escort and my fps ranged from 25 -45! Online i was able to fly in Formation with one BF 110 and a He 111 with playable FPS.

You dont need to reinstall the game completely if you want the vanilla game back without beta patches- use steams inbuilt service:

Library-> Right click CLoD -> Properties -> Local Files -> Verify integrity of game cache.

Steam will now delete all the modified files and redownload only the files changed by the patches to the versions from the original. That way you don't need to worry about copying and backups, steam does it all for you.