You'd be suprised how large the RAM footprint is on WWIIOL and IL2/FB. 512mb is now considered to be near the minimum requirement for quality gameplay in either, with 1+gb being optimal for huge maps and hi-res skins!

I'm pretty sure that my video card is my largest bottleneck, but right now it plays IL2FB at high resolution with little to no stutter unless some knob loads up a frigging huge map and with tons of objects. For WWIIOL, the footprint hovers right around 512mb so while you don't NEED to have that much, you'll have some wicked stutters/pauses and frame rate hits if you have less.

I've kind of got a little bit confused as to what card is modern or not these days. There's too many varying nomeclatures and brands to keep up with it all. I've had good luck with Nvidia, like their driver support and have really never had any problems with them.. so I'd be most likely to stick with them unless you've got a very compelling argument for switching to ATI.

Specifically, which card were you thinking of for around $200?

Regarding CoD.. the best part about it for me was that you aren't just a one man Rambo army killing thousands of bad guys.. you nearly always have a squad of friends with you that help out, lay covering fire and move the plot along. VERY FREAKING COOL! You can pick up weapons (which I find I *must* do in many missions because I run out of ammo for my guns often) There are a few missions that are just absolutely insanely crazy with withering machine gun fire riccocheting (sp) off of everything and guys getting seriously mowed down or blown into the air by grenades and mortars and whatnot.

Only problem is that now I'm done and I'm wanting more action.. been having trouble finding more single-player maps. Mostly, there's a ton of multiplayer maps.

Which IL2 do you have, anyway.. the first one or the "Forgotten Battles" version? Online play with IL2/FB is unbelievably fun. Scripted servers establish mission objectives for each side and offer up to 64 live players simultaneously (although most limit to 32 for bandwidth issues).

Late,

~O.