Except this is not just a game, its a flightsim, probably the most complex and advanced one ever and requiring lots of cpu horsepower for AI, weather, flightmodel, complex damage model etc in addition to GPU power for looks.
Its conceivable that PC with more cores CPUs will give access to, for example, more complex AI routines or higher fidelity flight model.Oleg has said SOW has been designed for the long term, and in the long term PC performance is advancing by increasing the number of cores.

Doesn't matter whether you want to call it a game or a flight sim - they still use huge 3D graphics processing but I agree about utilising modern multi-core as this makes a lot of sense of course.

I don't know if SOW is going to be more CPU or GPU dependant or whether they are being clever and it will be able to adjust according to hardware but I will hope that a fast dual core with the best graphics card I can afford and bags of RAM will do the job for me.

SoW will probably remain in the tradition of flight simulators: CPU & RAM with the video card as a more minor requirement. The fact is simply that much of modern GPU engineering is focussed on first person shooters and not-that-useful for flight simulators. I'd also recommend waiting to upgrade until a few months after SoW:BoB is released.

EWW!

Whatever you do, don't go for Vista, if you're gonna upgrade, get Windows 7 instead, it's FAR better than Vista, and supports both DX10 and DX11.

It's OK I know how to tame Vista

And I have it on good authority that Vista will receive a platform upgrade to use DX11.

I'll have to upgrade before it comes out because I won't be able to fly it period with what I have..I don't think Single core 3gig with 2 gigs of ram and a 512 agp card

My system is in my signature. I'll be using it.

As an AMD/ATI aficionado, logically, my next upgrade should be a year from now. By then, AMD will have their 6 core "enthusiast" level CPU on the market -- I imagine BoBSOW will use 6 cores. The next MB chip set will be out. And, ATI will have their next major generation of GPU on the market (the HD5xxx series is the last of the current major generation).

On the other hand, logic is not always the determining factor

But still, why get Vista? It is for all intents and purposes massively inferior to Windows 7.

You will really appreciate the extra RAM and a 64 bit OS on that computer. I have a Core i7 machine too and had been long sceptical that moving from XP 32 bit and 3GB of RAM to Windows Vista / 7 and 6GB of RAM would make an appreciable difference. Well it has made a very noticeable difference - easily as much as in the older days when I would upgrade a CPU. I have seen pretty dramatic improvements in all games - a small increase in maximum frame rates (which I don't see because I run vsync anyway) but far more importantly a dramtic improvement in minimum frame rates.

I would go so far as to say that apart from those times in the past when I built completely new machines, I have never seen such an improvement as I have when going to 64 bit and 6GB RAM on my Core i7 machine.

I do have to add though (given the discussions regarding Vista / windows 7) is that I do not notice any difference in performance whatsoever between Vista 64 bit and Windows 7 64 bit. They both perform identically in games on my rig. As I say, the big jump in performance was going from XP 32 bit to Vista 64 bit and 3GB to 6GB.

Perhaps the only other upgrade I could suggest to you is to consider a good quality solid state drive. By the time SOW comes out, they might possibly be sensibly priced (or at least cheaper than they are now). I have a mere 30 GB one in my rig but that is actually just big enough since the rig only has to run one racing sim and one flight sim (I am running Vista 64 bit Lite, which is only about 9 GB installed). But it made a dramatic difference to performance and I could never go back to a mechanical hard drive.

Sensible feedback and much appreciated, but i think i'll pass on SSDs for now. The i7 is a slight departure from my usual upgrading routine, in that i had kept my previous athlonXP 2600 for about 5 years, so i had to change the whole lot. That's why i opted for the i7, as it was a new generation that will have better upgradeability in the future.

Normally, i upgrade components partially and never get top of the line ones. I usually get second best items, as they are usually the best value for money. I've got a 1.5TB disk since i got this i7 rig back in sping and it's already 1TB full. For the price of an SSD i could probably get 2 more of these drives, one for general storage and one for running a win7 install