SOW System specs

I imagine there will be some CPU upgrades and GPU upgrades by this time next year.

[Flanker35M]

S!

ATI is planning the Southern Island refresh for their current lineup, which should boost the tesselation etc. Next year they launch the new Northern Island series with newer architecture. I bet nVidia will refresh their lineup as well and launch the 512-bit versions of their 4xx-series. IMO any current DX11 card in either SLI or XFire should be able to run SoW at acceptable FPS with decent eyecandy.

If SoW does utilize 4 cores as stated here, you will be good with any multicore CPU, be it AMD or Intel. They are overclockable so performance should really not be an issue. I think you need a lot of RAM with SoW.

[lbuchele]

I was talking to my older brother today about building a new system for SOW using a GTX 480.
He told me to think twice because the hot temperatures of this card and recommend me the ATI 5870 or 5970 (700USD!)
Well, it´s OK to me spending 700 bucks in a really fast VGA I reply to him, but Il2 always had an issue with ATI drivers, am I right?
I´m wondering if this time Oleg will do SOW Nvidia optmized too?
Because if not I´ll go the ATI road with ease.
Anyone has experience running ATI cards in Il2?

[nearmiss]

The last good ATI I had was a 9800 PRO. I bought a couple after that and gave ATI up. Someone mentioned after AMD bought ATI they just couldn't get it right.

I was with ATI for several years when nVidia was in a slump (or I thought so).

I use 8800 GTX 512 OC version now nVidia. Not too much heat and is only one card. I will stay with one card as long as I can. I remember back years ago when I had a 110V powered fan running into the side of my computer to keep it cool. That fan roared enough you needed a headset.

If you are a IL2 enthusiast you might want to hold off a bit longer. If you have other games and can justify the expense... do your best, eh.

[AKA_Tenn]

Originally Posted by lbuchele

I was talking to my older brother today about building a new system for SOW using a GTX 480.
He told me to think twice because the hot temperatures of this card and recommend me the ATI 5870 or 5970 (700USD!)
Well, it´s OK to me spending 700 bucks in a really fast VGA I reply to him, but Il2 always had an issue with ATI drivers, am I right?
I´m wondering if this time Oleg will do SOW Nvidia optmized too?
Because if not I´ll go the ATI road with ease.
Anyone has experience running ATI cards in Il2?

don't build a machine around IL2 anymore, the game is too old, if your going to build a machine within the next few months, do it because you play more games than just IL2 and want a machine that'll run the new directx10/11 stuff... otherwise wait for storm of war, (from the state of the screens/dev updates) looks like it'll be ready within a year or so.

ATI you get about 15% more performance per dollar, but the drivers aren't very good with openGL... pretty much any new game coming out will use directX, so thats perfectly fine... but IL2 uses openGL, so ATI cards have a few issues...

so basically... go with Nvidia if you play games that use physX hardware, or have money to blow on getting one of the cards that are faster than any of ATI's lineup... and go with ATI cause of way more performance for your dollar, and a lot quieter and runs cooler.

[lbuchele]

Humm.I finally understood the ATI problem with Il2 was a OpenGL issue?
If this was the problem,I can feel safe in buying a ATI 5970 to run SOW?

[Flanker35M]

S!

SoW will be DirectX 9/10/11 so either ATI or nVidia will work just fine on it. I use at the moment MSI 480GTX and temperature after hours of IL-2 is around 74-76'C so not that hot in my opinion. Sure some degrees more than ATI 5870HD I had but still manageable. Will buy a new VGA cooler for the 480GTX soon. Also updating to the latest BIOS from card vendor dropped temperatures nearly 10'C under load.

[janpitor]

I think temperatures arent such an issue, but noise can be if the case is not well ventilated. I have thermaltake element S with several fans (also two big, one blowing directly onto the VGA, another upper output). In 3D mark vantage I didnt hear my card.

ALso another problem. I wouldnt buy ATI 5970 until SOW is out, because there can be a problem with multipleVGA such as rise fo flight or FSX have, and the ń you would get only half the graphics power, as 5970 is essentially two cards connected by crossfire on single PCB.

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

SoW will be DirectX 9/10/11 so either ATI or nVidia will work just fine on it. I use at the moment MSI 480GTX and temperature after hours of IL-2 is around 74-76'C so not that hot in my opinion. Sure some degrees more than ATI 5870HD I had but still manageable. Will buy a new VGA cooler for the 480GTX soon. Also updating to the latest BIOS from card vendor dropped temperatures nearly 10'C under load.