I am currently running a amd 4400 dual core with 2 gigs of corsair (something another) and one nvidia 7800gt. Its time (or a little past) to start upgrading. My plan, over time, is to first get a 8800 gt 512mb graphics card. Then later get a new MB and a 6850 intel core duo 2 3.0 gig and probably 4 megs of better mem. BoB2 and Il2 both are pretty hard on my system now. My question is will just a 8800 gt make much difference now, or is it pointless with the ram and CPU I have. Any advice is much appreciated.

I just put together a new rig last week just like what you are looking at.
6850 Core 2, 4 Gigs DDR2 800 Corsair RAM, 8800GT KO 512mb, Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R

My old system was - AMD 4400, 1 Gig DDR 400, 6800GT OC.

It runs IL2 1946 very smoothly at the highest settings (without gunners). FPS is locked at 60 and it rarely goes under. Haven't flied in many large battles yet. Did fly over Leningrad at highest settings AA 8x and was still at around 60 FPS.

Runs BOB2 very good also. Just flew black Thursday after noon mission with all settings maxed out with FPS between 60 to 80 flying up to German formation then 30 to 45 FPS in middle of bomber formation with flak, tracers, smoke from planes.

Thanks for the info sr12, may I ask what power supply you put on that rig? I think I got a 535w in my current system and was wondering if that is sufficient.

I went with a 1000W power supply on my rig. I wanted to have the option to run two 8800 GTX's SLI when the prices drop.

I have a 650W Antec Trio Power. Yours is only about 100W less than mine, that may be sufficient. I know the 8800GT 512mb isn't a power hog like the 8800 gtx.

Yes, for BoBII at least, a CPU upgrade will likely have a larger effect. But of course that often needs new RAM and a new MoBo too..

I did a cheap upgrade. AMD X2 5000 Black Edition, MSI NForce 520 board and 2 GB DDR2 800 ram, for about 215 EURO.
With the cpu multiplier at 15 it runs at 3000 Mhz. Its fast enough for BoB WoV with settings at max.

I doubt 4MB main mem will help with BobII.
Il2 may be different.
Faster mem could help.

One simply test to do is if you increase the 3D resolution, does that change FPS?
If the answer is yes, a better gfx card should help.
But if the answer is no, you can not derive anything from it regarding CPU versus GPU.

MIsty, what graphics card are you running?

@ Craterman: 1 Leadtek GF 7950GT 512MB PCIe. Power supply is a 350W Seasonic, no problems! With AMD 5000 Black Edition, you only change the cpu multiplier in BIOS, thats all. No FSB or Voltage tweaking.
I would recommend a NForce 520 or 560 chipset for the AM2 socket boards.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/22/budget_overclocker/page31.html

get an xbox

no piddling around with settings just to get the game to run

looks just as good as on a PC

most good games come in XBox and PC versions

if you like bobII there are plenty of sim titles for xbox

pcs are so last week

I guess I'm really going to have to take some time and work out the animation...

Actually, I love my Wii (well, it's for the kids honestly, darling ;))

But it's not for family stuff like bowling and tennis. As different from sims as you can get.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll probably go ahead with the 8800 gt and the MB and the cpu a bit later. My 4400 is not OC yet and I got a water cooler, so I may try my hand at that for a little
boost. I wouldn't mind having a wii, just because of the unique game play. But as far as sims go, I don't think there's any thing like BoB2 on a console yet. Heck, there's not much that compares on a pc for that matter.