I have a P8Z68-V pro, i7 2600k@4.5GHz, GTX570HD, G.skill ripjaws 8GB ram, with max graphics except for takeoff and landing i always get more than 30 fps
and the problems you're having with ur stick aren't anything to do with cliffs of dover... it has everything to do with the fact that fighter ace is your flying experiance... if you had played il2 1946, rise of flight, fsx, etc... before coming to this it wouldn't be re-learning how to fly... just learning how to do the fancy combat stuff without frying ur engine... and aim...
and i would recommend getting the i5 2500k (make sure it has a k) and if you're going to get a new videocard get an nvidia card at least a gtx560ti but a pair of them would be better... or a single 580
the reason I got the gtx570 is because it has 2.5Gb vram, and i couldn't see paying 100$ more for 10% performance the 580 would give me...
and the reason i recomend the 2500k over the 2600k is because the 2500k can easily be overclocked to the same speed as the 2600k or 2700k, it just doesn't have hyper-threading and has a smaller cache, those two things don't matter, but might help in longevity.
but until ati steps it up a notch, nvidia/intel is the way to go... since amd/ati went 8 cores... in a world of single threaded appz...
take the benchmarks below with a grain of salt, since the benchmark is multi-threaded, and 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of appz are single threaded. (or use less than 4 cores)
