S!
In my experience the most FPS hit comes from smoke, explosions, ship guns and cities in IL-2, not the cockpit alone. But anyways, there are 2 installs so I can use both stock and modded game. Win-win
Easiest upgrade for IL-2 player is to get a nVidia card as IL-2 is optimized for it. the difference to ATI can be quite big on certain scenarios. Friends of mine run on "lesser" nV series like 8800GT or Ultra and still get close to the AMD offerings even today with far less price. So no need to cycle every 6mth, just use NV for IL-2 and you can not go wrong
