Must be fate. I attempted to download via Steam ILS/COD and it said it would take 2 days! I thought I killed the download and forgot about it. This morning I booted my puter a there it was. Cod ready to fly!
Looks alot better,controls/settings saved from the last install. The pea soup green terrain looks better. Still stutter city so I started tweaking.
Just like FSX and other sims, sometimes you have to ignore what seems obvious and just start moving sliders and experimenting.
After tinkering the last hour I have settled for whats best for me. Textures to med and the highest aa settings eliminated the stutters. To many settings,tweaks to cover them all but COD is good enough for me to get that quick air to air, flaming metal furball fix.
If you bought it like I did and its collecting dust, its worth reloading the new version. Also for 20 bucks its worth buying now.