tessellation

[Les]

ATI have announced new 6900 series cards coming out before the end of the year, and details are emerging of a GTX580 from nVidia early next year, which is when the latest rumours suggest BOB will be out. So if you're into the latest and greatest, I'd say wait and see, or just get something to tide you over until then (ATI or a GTX260 with after-market cooling).

You might want to consider too though, even if BOB does make great use of tesselation (who knows, it could be used on the water, maybe even the coastline), chances are even the next generation cards from both camps won't be able to crank it right up and give you good frame-rates. That was the case with the Il-2 series when new graphical enhancements were introduced (with the Pacific Fighters release IIRC), so there is a precedent, and it makes sense that a brand new game in a new series is going to be ahead of the hardware curve for at least a while, if they don't want their game looking too dated too soon.

It should still be playable on pretty much all current hardware, but it's highly unlikely you'll be able to max it out until at least a year or two from now, at which point they'll probably introduce some new hardware-choking enhancements and the cycle will go on. So if you're really serious about buying a rig that will be tailored around BOB, right now is not the time to be doing it. That's how it seems to me anyway.