noob to Il2 Sturmovik COD- virtually unplayable- need help/advice please!

[TheSelf]

Hi all,

Just purchased this game- on a disc- yet it connected to my steam account and downloaded and installed via my steam account to version 1.05.15950 today- I have read about the really bad performance issues 'out the box', but thought these have been fixed by now or at least improved and not as bad as what I have experienced so far...- I have pretty high specs- intel i7 CPU 965 3.33GHz (slightly overclocked), 12 GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 590, fast HDDs (in RAID 0) and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit- even though I can play Battlefield 3 & Flight Simulator X on 3 monitors at 5760x1080 resolution and high video settings with the same system & just this week I had to change the original hard drives of that system and install Windows and all my programs, drivers etc from scratch as a clean install (Il 2 Sturmovik is the first game I've installed back on this 'clean' system).. I cannot play Il2 Sturmovik COD even at 1920x1080 resolution at the very lowest settings (no anti aliasing, no vsync, no grass etc- and details all at 'very low'- I started all with very high on 3 monitors and worked my way down to the very lowest- the frame rates are unplayable and too slow- I saw someone on YouTube with the same version of the game and similar specs to me and it looked good and was running smoothly- what am I doing wrong? If I installed Patch 1.06.17582- will that make that much difference and how do the patches work (do I need to install anything else beyond version 1.05.15950 to make 1.06.17582 install properly)? What functionality will I lose by installing the patch- multiplayer? Is it possible to revert back if the beta patch is too unstable?

As this has been installed after a clean install of windows etc- I am currently reinstalling BF3 as a benchmark to ensure everything is in order on that front, but am anticipating (hopefully) that everything is in working order & Il-2 COD is to be addressed solely..

These questions probably have been answered elsewhere in this forum- but a general search comes up with 100s of pages-I honestly do not have the time to trawl through all those pages just to the game going in a playable state from the get go- I cannot find a page on clear steps to take to optimize this game 'out the box' to run smoothly other than install beta patches.. and would greatly appreciate any generous person's feedback to help me just get going as this is ridiculous to be this unplayable 'out the box' so long after it's release and with so many updates, unless something is up..

Thanking you greatly in advance!