[agracier]

for a simple answer, try and get a quad core or at least a dual core machine ... and as much hard disk space as you can and a good sized screen to enjoy Il-2 on

the hard disk size so that you can have multiple types of IL-2 installs on it and a large screen for the visual pleasure of course

[HansHansen]

my pc:769,82

[Paulo Hirth]

1-DONT USE QUADCORE FOR IL-2! Dual-core with higth freq work much better for IL-2, i say this because i test a Q-6600(quadcore) and a E-6600(dualcore)
and E-6600, E6600 was much better!

OK, i sugest to you a Intell E8400, a motherboard with suport to DDR2-1066, use 4GB DDR1066 and a GF8800GT with 182.06 driver...
Is the minimum config to fly with higth quality.

[RAF_OldBuzzard]

OK, since this is a dedicated GAMING machine, the clear choice is going to be an AMD CPU based system, using one of the Phenom IIs.

I know that the Intel guys are going to claim that the i7 out performs the Phenom II, and they are right, IF you are doing Video encoding, and some other multi threaded applications. For GAMING however, the Phenom IIs perform just as well as the i7s. Especially in HIGH RESOLUTION/High Quality gaming. Here is a page of a review of the Phenom II 955 that whows high resolution performance for various processors:
http://www.techspot.com/review/162-amd- ... age11.html

I would suggest that you go with an all AMD/ATI system.

CPU: Any Phenom II from the X4 920 up will be very good for IL2.

Motherboard: One with an AMD 780 or 790 chipset. I really like the ASRock boards. They are high quality and low cost. You will need to be careful in matching the MB with the CPU, as there are two different sockets for the Phenom IIs. AM2+, and AM3. Generally the AM2+ uses DDR2 memory, and the AM3 DDR3. IF you go with the X4 920 or 940, then an AM2+ will work well, and DDR2 memory is cheaper than DDR2, which with the AMD CPUs performs just as well as DDR3. If you go with the 945, 955, or 965, then you will need an AM3 board and DDR3 memory.

Video: An ATI 4870, or 4890. Either has more than enough performance for IL2. Pick the one that fits in your budget better.

One other option would be to drop down to the Phenom II X3 720, and use an ATI 4850 video card. Not quite the performance of the X4s and 4870, but it would play IL2 quite well. The only disadvantage to this would be that it may not be good enough for SOW, if/when it's released.

[VF101hawk]

I used to only use AMD but now i use the Intel dualcore 64 bits instead.
It works great and you dont have to buy the topp end either.
Buy a Nvidia card . i have a 8800 gt with 1|bg ram and it works really good, best drivers at least on my machine are the 178,23 as it accually gives up to 50% better FPS in IL2 then the 182+ drivers(tested on 3 different machines and setup with 8800gt and 9800gt cards.)
As you upgrade your machine to take theese larger graphic card and cpus you have to have at least a 600w (min) PSU.
Use whatever you can use from your old machine. like DVD rom and stuff like that instead of buying a new one.(mines 5?years old).
The onboard soundcard is more then good enough in most cases exept if you are a hifi freak.
If you wit a little the Win7 will be out for sale(October) and then you might be able to get a good OEM deal on it when buying lets say a hard drive.
When it coms to hard drives i use a Samsung HD753LJ SCSI (750gb) with 32 mgb ram its fast and best of all cheap compared to what you get and has so long (2years) worked verry nice and its quiet too.
If you get the Win7 64 bit then the 182+ graphic drivers perform as good as the 178,23 drivers on the XP HE 32 bit.

Asus is supposed to be good product at least thats what Rescuecom says in theire survei over wich producer has had less problems with theire hardware.

You might want to go fo rthe DD3 ram as prices are almost identic with the prices of DD2 ram nowerdays. well nearly at least so cheap. but the DD3 is on the opening of its life the DD2 is on its end from what i understand, and you might want to upgrade later again??

[randomaccess]

You see my pc specs below? Ok, well that pc achieves 80-120fps in il2 so aim for anything above that. Very vague answer but you get my point hopefully. 8)