maybe an un answerable question given the number of variables, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me what spec of system is required for running IL2 smoothly at perfect graphics settings. i'd like to dream that one day I could build a rig specifically for IL2 and storm of war, and dual boot so I could run xp and 7.

Pretty much the equivalent of a core2 at 3.0ghz or higher with 2-4gigs of ram with a GTX260 or better will really top out his game, though you can still get good frames and perfect settings with a 2ghz AthlonX2 and a X1950. I'd aim for high end as you can afford and you should be able to do decent on SoW.

If you want to build for SoW wait. No one knows how long that could take, but every one knows prices will go down and performance will go up during the waiting time. We might be running P40's or 256 cores by the time SoW is available.

Probably the cheapest system that will run "Perfect"mode ok at 1280x1024 with 20+avg fps is the ASRock Atom 330. I have triple boot setup with this system now XP Pro x86, Win7 x86 and Ubuntu 9.10 x86. IL-2 runs under all OS from my xp partition. Best performance is under Ubuntu. The final 9.10 will be released in a couple of days, hopefully with Wine upgrading to a later version than 1.0.1 so some sound issues with IL-2 will be solved then. After that Ubuntu 9.10 is clearly the best OS for more than IL-2 alone. The beta I am running now is already leaving XP Pro and Windows 7 far behind.

I rather stick with Windows 7 64 bit, if you get Ultimate you can run XP virualy in Windows 7 wich is a nice feature for some older aplications.

Like Urufu said, you do good with an Intel/AMD Dual/Quad core, 4GB RAM and a nVidia GTX2xx/ATI HD5xxx model card (or 2)

Personaly my choice would go with a AMD CPU, AMD MoBo and AMD/ATI HD5000 series card for sure if it was for IL2 1946 and SoW later on, but i do not know how good and how much the nVidia GT300 cards are gonna be, but there still almost 6 months away...