on older cards "fast writes" was important to have on, i think it has something to do with using the full 8x speed of the AGP bus.
no idea if that is still true with the latest monster gfx cards in 2008 on a pci-e bus.
if you have an agp card, first get the right version of the ati drivers, i think CC 7.1 and 7.7 are two reliable versions that are known to give good performance in il2. leave the settings at install-default for now.
after that find the right settings for your il2 setup.exe, there was a good post on this at the zoo some yrs ago
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...6651075613/p/1
initially keep your ati CC settings for AA and AF at "application controlled" and test in the black death track what your fpsec are, then change the the AA and AF settings to 4x 6x etc.. and see how many frames you are prepared to loose to get better eye candy.