Strange, as my only serious problem is that my Ati 4890 1Gb is not throttling the clock speeds correctly (as many other Ati owners report).
My system?
i7 920 @ 2.7 Ghz: not overclocked
only 3GB of RAM: win7 didn't exist when i built it two years ago and i didn't want to go with vista, so it was the only reasonable choice--> i decided to go with triple channel RAM so it was eitther 3 or 6 GB but since i was initially sticking to XP it didn't make sense to get 6
Ati 4890 1GB: I had a 4870 1GB initially but it was faulty and died on me, so i swapped it via warranty for the 4890 1GB.
My graphics settings:
1680x1050 (native monitor resolution)
Roads, cockpit shadows and Vsync on
SSAO off
Model detail, damage decals, effects and land shadows on high
building detail on low
everything else on medium
I used to get FPS in the upper teens to low 20s over land with noticeable stutters, until i realized the GPU wasn't throttling up as it should. It stays at the underclocked "power saving" mode of 240Mhz.
So i downloaded Ati tray tools, made a custom profile for CoD that forces the maximum reference clock speed (but still not overclocking above it) and what do you know?
Lowest FPS dip in the black death track is around 18 or so but it stays above 25 for most of the track. I can fly the London sightseeing QMB mission fine as long as i don't get too low (that is, skimming the roof tops drops below 20 FPS, 200-300 feet up and it's playable and getting better the higher you go...for example when spawning at the starting altitude everything is very smooth).
In a representative mixed terrain setting with both land and sea in view, some buildings and a good amount of AI units i get anywhere between 25 and 50 FPS and over water it's capped at 60 due to Vsync as i have a 60Hz monitor.
For example, i tried one of the QMB Luftwaffe ground attack missions as a test. Low level flying, my flight in four Bf-110C7s, three enemy Defiants scrambling from the airfield just inland of a coastal town (aka buildings on screen), the enemy vehicle column, a train loaded with fuel carriages, a whole lot of static AI units around the airfield, some well placed bombs and a whole lot of very large explosions and fireworks after hitting the train, followed by repeated strafing passes on the Defiants as they were taxing to take-off, all in all a good mid-range benchmark sortie.
The only time i got very mild and momentary stutters was when diving on something and shooting from a zoomed in view, but i had that problem with the original IL2 back in 2001 as well, if i fired rockets from a zoomed in view the magnified smoke effect gave my PC the hiccups. I don't have this as much with RAF fighters and their smokeless tracers, so i guess it's a similar thing.
Who knows, maybe if i turn down effects to medium i can get rid of this but i like them too much, i can shoot well enough from the wide FOV and keeping the wider view helps with terrain avoidance through lack of target fixation
Plus, it only happens when zooming in with the ground in sight at low altitude as the textures are initially loaded, if i make a secondary pass it's much smoother. It certainly doesn't happen in air to air combat with the sky in view or even with the ground in view if i'm a bit higher up. All in all a minor annoyance for the extra eye-candy.
My only problem was that i got reboots due to instability, since i forced the overclock through a 3rd party program with minimal testing (i tried the 850 MHz that's the default maximum clock setting in my catalyst control center, then dropped it to 750Mhz but it still rebooted). In other games the GPU clocks up automatically via the Ati driver and it's perfectly stable.
My conclusion from all this is that i'm not spending a penny on hardware until the sim is fully optimized (especially the full screen mode that's not detected by Ati cards, which results in the GPU not throttling up properly), as it seems that when my hardware is fully utilized it's perfectly capable of running the sim at settings that are far from shabby.
A lot of people don't realize that the latest DX10 generation cards like the Ati 4870/4890 or the nVidia 28x series are just as fast if not faster than a more expensive, low-tier DX11 generation card like an Ati 57xx/56xx. Since the sim currently doesn't run DX11 mode graphics, neither benefits from other DX11 features (like parallel processing), it really makes no sense to upgrade the GPU if you have one of the latest DX10 generation cards.
Much better to wait until it actually utilizes DX11 features, by which time it might be possible to grab something like an Ati 6970 2GB or equivalent nVidia GPU for $180 or so (it's around $240 currently).
I think the only upgrade i might do is get three more sticks of 1GB RAM for my second triple channel bank (for a total of 6GB) since i've been running win7 x64 for some months now, RAM is currently dirt cheap and i'm starting to get marginal with my current amount.
Long story short, i wouldn't throw more hardware at the sim until it starts fully utilizing the existing one
