What a Dilemma

[Houndstone Hawk]

I am so very desperate to enjoy this sim in the rich way that I did with IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 but it is getting harder by the day.

I have thoroughly enjoyed moments since COD's release & this inspired me to make a vid & I see what this sim can truly offer but to experience it in it's truest form, you need to take away all training aids, & fly properly with full-on CEM, temp effects etc.

Now here's my dilemma. Although the patches have always installed with success, my moderate quad core machine hasn't seen any of these improvements or "massive performance improvements" that so many lucky folk speak of. With days of tinkering & getting to grips with the great CEM system, I am suddenly (since the last beta & tonight's main patch), affected with severe fps drops when my Spit or Hurri climbs to an altitude of 1000 feet or more but only when facing to the front. Looking up, left or right or even behind or to the ground, I'm enjoying fps between 35-60 over land but facing forward; a sudden drop to 7-15 fps. This, I have deduced, is completely down to the exhaust effects. I turn off CEM but keep all graphics settings the same & looking to the front is the same healthy fps rate as when looking in other directions (because the effects are taken away with auto management).
I turned the visual effects from my normal 'medium' to a 'low' setting & this took away the exhaust effect at the expense of explosions, fire, splashes & just about every other combat detail you come to expect in a WWII sim on a quad core machine, 4GB Ram & GTX 580 card.
And so I'm stuck with using CEM & a featureless experience or have the explosions & everything we come to expect & dumb down to an automated pilot experience whereby the automation decides to chop your prop pitch just after take off with no say in the matter or indeed any over ride by the user.

If anyone knows of a workaround that enables you to fly CEM with medium visual effect settings without such an alarming drop then I'd welcome the help.

My system is: Intel Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8400 2.66GHz @ 2.67GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 amp! edition with latest drivers & Vista 64 with SP2