I56600K, GTX980Ti, 8gb of ram, no SSD for me, ultra settings without any problems for 2v2 where I play.
8gb of ram is fine for CoH2, in fact it should be enough for all games that don't have obvious memory leaks.
In CoH2 case, its more CPU demanding then anything.
Well then how you explain that I also run the game on max settings, with the AA trick, on i5-2500k and gtx760 with 16gb of ram and ssd. I also had really long loading times until I started to defrag after every patch and eventually bought ssd when I became tired with that chore. Its not cpu demanding that much, 2500k, that is a 4,5 year old cpu, doesnt even stress in coh2.
I also could play the game on 8gb but only if I turned everything off in the background including browser, media player, voip, celo and so on. This makes game much less enjoyable.
That's the point guys, the performance is always different. Some have 16 GB of Ram (as i have) and have problems, others have only 8 GB and they don't have problems. The performance/optimization is all over the place.
The only sure thing is that players with AMD Cards have less problems.
The optimization is bad. People with high end rigs have problems running this game smoothly. Even in low/medium settings.
There are so many treads about it, it isn't funny any more.
With SSD you reducing your loading times (Windows or games) at least to a half. I have one 1 year now and i will never go back.
Its not a must but it is awesome.
Windows takes 45 seconds to load from pressing the button till desktop. And 25 seconds is only the BIOS load time.
The game was at times(one or two) very close to a good balance.
But with Relic releasing new (untested and OP) Armies and new (untested and OP) DLC commanders, the fu@%^& up the balance again and again and again.
This is going on since release.