I just strapped into a Northwood 2.4 after upgrading from a P3-1Ghz machine. What can be said, but "W.O.W.". My Ti4400 has been liberated! The difference is unreal - it's a whole different sim. It's like cutting butter with a hot knife. Even SimFlyers scenery is liquid (how bizarre is that!). So much for the $70 hobby ;-)JNorthwood 2.40B, 533 FSBLeadtek WinFast A250 - Ti4400, nVidia 30.82 WHQL512MB Corsair XMS PC3200, 2-2-2-5SBLive! Gamer/MP3 5.1Windows XP Professional

Agreed...I've been saying this for quite a few months now.Framebuffer is life. There is a good reason for a 128 mb card. And XP knows how to use that extra memory quite well.The sim is so fluid with this type of setup, its like some sort of animation. Duh...guess it is animation, but you know what I mean! :)Oh...and that 533FSB must be pretty cool too!Cheers,bt

Glad to see you're having a brand new experience. I'm running only a P 1.8, 512 Rdram, gf3ti500, but my sim is also rock solid, even in high PAI airports like Heathrow or LA. Int. I have done some minor tweaking, and run with almost everything maxed, but not water textures. I couldn't be more pleased with how it all works.I know some people don't like to tweak, but for most systems like mine or lower, the benefits far outreach the frustration. Before tweaking, I wasn't satisfied with the graphics or framerates. What's great about the gf3's is that they do work well with high end machines and also do respond well to Gforce tweak software. It takes some time, but after a few weeks of messing around (perhaps three or four hours total) I'm where I am today, which is a very satisfied customer.Spruce

Yeah Baby!I use a P4A with 2G new last spring and the difference from the P3 500 was like night and day!Cool CPU, huh!Rick

I just went from an XP 2000+ (1.6Ghz) that was running @ 52c to a P4 2.26Ghz which runs at 36c under load and it's made quite a difference in my system. My whole system runs a lot cooler now and has lots more overclocking potential :-hah

What is most surprising to me is how much bandwidth the Ti4x00 cards have with a little CPU power behind them. With few exception, I can run my sliders to the max now without no visible impact to frame rates. The only major FPS killer that I have to be mindful of is the terrain-mesh detail. There's a very significant drop between 90% and 100% complexity - so I leave it at 90%. Oddly, Autogen used to be an FPS slayer for me, but the card can handle any Autogen density now with equal efficiency (i.e. Extremely Dense runs as quickly as Sparse). The only overhead seems to be the CPU instructions for enabling the feature in the sim - as I noticed FPS will jump suddenly upwards if Autogen is disabled entirely. I can't see turning this feature off, however, as it adds significantly to the VFR experience.AI traffic still tends to slow things down a bit in highly congested areas, but nowhere near as much as it used to. Besided, I find running this slider above 50% anyway puts a ridiculous amount of traffic in the skies.It's not so much that I am running insanely faster with regard to FPS, but the sim is much more visually stunning (especially now that I can enable anisotropic filtering) and the level of smoothness I've attained is like night and day in contrast to my old box.Almost makes me want to install FS98 for kicks just to see what I can get for frame rates now :) 500+? 700+?J

John - I think I'm finally going to replace the Intel HSF and see if I can get past the 2.8Ghz mark. What's the idle temp with your Swiftech? Noise level OK? TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.30's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 12055http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4088814

AMD chips have always been little fire bugs. I have a small Linux server running on an old AMD K6-233 and I have to put this ridiculous 3-inch-high dual-fan and sink on it just to keep it under 60C.What kind of cooling are you running on your 2.26? Mine is running ~47C under full load. I'd like to bring that down around 40 I think.JPS. BTW, I ponied up some $ for a 430W Antec PLUS880 case and power supply. I have never had much to say about cases before, but let me tell y'all, this case is an engineernig marvel. This was a decent investment (normally I think of cases as a necessary evil :) Somebody really had their head glued on when they designed this case - absolutely everything about it is about convenience and easy access. Not to mention it's very sturdy and the PS fan is a mere whisper.

What kind of voltages are you running on your CPU/AGP/Memory to keep your box stable at 2.7?I haven't fiddled much with overclocking the FSB much, although I did have it running stable earlier at around 145 FSB (default voltages)...much more than this, and the system got a tad cranky. I have 400Mhz DDR RAM in this thing, so I am not too worried about the RAM keeping up - likely the AGP card is having a hard time running above 72Mhz.

Trip, it's around 25 to 28. I am running a 80mm Delta on it, but the noise isn't too bad. You should be able to get more juice from it with a bigger heatsink :)

The only voltage change is to the CPU core. It's really solid at 2.7Ghz with the voltage at 1.575. The FSB is set to 123 (this is a 100Mhz "a" chip) and the AGP/PCI is locked at 66/33. Is there anyway you can lock the AGP?TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.30's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 12055http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4088814

Thanks John. I'll going to give something a try in the next couple of weeks. These "a" chips seem to run a little hotter than the "b"'s but mine's just not right. I'm running 41 idle and 49 with a 100% load. That's about average for the stock HSF but I know I can get it down some. And here I thought when I got rid of the old P3/600 I was through with tweaking things....... :-)TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.30's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 12055http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4088814

Ah...hmmm, I don't recall seeing such an option in my BIOS (it's an AMI BIOS) - just voltage and FSB control. The 100's always seem to fare better than the 133's in the OC domain for this very reason.For now, anyway, I'm content to have nearly 2.5x the CPU power :) JPS. The AGP/PCI lock is a nice feature, btw.

A 533Mhz FSB *would* be pretty amazing wouldn't it ;-)

I just ordered one of those Swifty's (the 4000) and some Arctic Silver for my set up. For a mere $65, having the ability to idle at near ambient temperature is a worthwhile investment for me. I get antsy when my CPU is flirting with 50C+. Call it paranoia??J