[UberDemon]

IL-2 COD Really Comes to Life with a decent Video Card

I was somewhat disappointed when I first started IL-2COD, because I expected it to be something like the previous generation of IL-2s up to 1946. Even with a mid-grade PC with enough memory and graphics card, you would do OK. Let's face it, IL-2 COD is magnitudes more complex than the original series (Remember the roads with only angularly perfect turns? ). I know it is blasphemy I don't custom build my PCs, but for the most part, the HPs I have owned have done the job.

Not too long ago I bought a "higher-end" HP Pavilion (Elite series HPE-500f), and it was perfect for about everything, so I expected it to be suitable for IL-2 COD. No. Not really. I also found out about not being able to update my BIOS on my own and not being able to over-clock (because HP takes those features out of their BIOS due to warranty issues)*. I started to read all the posts about performance issues, so I decreased my video options accordingly. It was pretty depressing, at its lowest settings, COD performed worse than IL-2 1946 at its highest settings in my PC.

With limited options for upgrades to my CPU (AMD 6x 2.7GHz @ 95V), and already decent RAM (8 GB DDR3), I looked into the video options. My PC came with a 300W power supply and an AMD HD 6450 PCIEx16 card with 512MB DDR3 in it. That was the bottleneck. It sounds good but in reality, as I found out, the ATI/AMD series are defined by their series number. Regardless of the 6xxx, it is the hundreds number that defines the quality... so there are major differences between a 64xx series and a 67xx series. The speed of the GPU memory makes a big difference too. (So, less memory that is really fast is much better than a greater number of memory which is slower).

I went to my local electronics shop and got a 600W power supply (because for higher end cards you need an extra power feed) and an XFX Radeon HD6770 with 1 GB DDR5 RAM (which is really fast). The power supply cost me the equivalent of about US$90 (plus VAT) and the video card cost me about US$180 (plus VAT). The sweet talking to my wife to allow me to buy something else related to IL-2, well that was a lot more expensive. In anyway, the amount is not ignorable, but it is not crazy-expensive either.

OH-MY-FRIGGIN-[deity of your preference]... that made all the difference in the world. I can play IL-2 COD (the latest Beta) in a fairly smooth manner. I took several flights on the Bf-109 and Hurricane very close to the ground. Yes there is some stuttering, which 1C really needs to work on, but it decreased a lot. To the point I took the time to write all this down.

My PC configuration is in my signature. My current graphics setting is included below:

1440x900x60 Full Screen
MD:H
BD:H
LD:H
Fr:M
VE:H
TQ:H
AA:Off
AE:Off
SSAO:Off
VSYNC:Off
DD:M
BA:M
LS:M
Grass:On
Shadows:On
Roads:On

(*) Note: By the way, in some HP PCs, there are options for over-clocking, but only via software. With SetFSB software from Mr. Abo (in Japan) one could conceptually over-clock a PC such as mine to about 2.9GHz in a stable manner.