Several questions before purchasing

[Blackdog_kt]

I don't have time to read the entire thread but i see most of the questions have been answered.

The one thing i have to add is that i have quite a similar system:
i7 920 @ 2.7 Ghz (stock)
3GB RAM
Ati 4890 1Gb
win7 x64

It runs well with most settings on medium, but keep in mind that my monitor runs at a lower resolution than most. I'm using a Dell 22" 16:10 aspect ratio monitor for the increased vertical space (helps during dogfights ) and it runs at 1680x1050, so my resolution is easier to manage with my current graphics card.

The other issue is that the sim really needs a lot of RAM and video RAM. Not only due to the current memory leak bug in multiplayer, but in general.

What i find is that even with the textures on medium, in some aircraft i get blurry textures at some instruments because i don't have enough RAM plus vRAM to load everything and it "downsizes" the texture resolution.

This only happens in certain parts of the bigger, twin engined bombers though: the bombsight reticule in the He-111 an Ju-88, the bombsight instruments in the Blenheim and the stencils/marking letters on the external textures of the aircraft.

I have a suspicion that if i add another 3GB of RAM to get to a total of 6GB, then it will be easier to load textures into RAM, which will also help "shuffling" them back and forth between RAM and graphics card when it needs them, so it might solve my blurry textures issue. In any case, that doesn't stop me from flying because i can still make out what the instruments display and use them effectively.

As for performance, unless you are staring at a group of clustered burning wrecks with the zoom view (lots of smoke/particle effects), i get smooth gameplay at most altitudes.

My video settings are:
1680x1050 resolution
AA off
Vsync on
model detail high
forests low
roads, grass and shadows (the three tick-boxes) are on
land shading on high usually, medium if i feel i want the extra frames per second
everything else medium

I can get anywhere between 30 and 50 FPS with this setup in a somewhat more graphics intensive aircraft like the 110, while flying over populated areas at low altitude, so it's good for most types of flying i usually do.

If i upgrade anything it will definitely be the RAM.