I am not sure if I am missing somthing but my overall results from upgrading to the 9700 Pro have not been all that great. I have checked out rage3d.com and other posts here, done some tweaking of XP and still only manage about a 4300 score on 3DMark2003. I am running a Dell 8200 P4 2 Ghz with 1024 RDRAM. I am not sure if I have hit the limit of what I can tweak but I tend to think Imight be missing some more basic.Any ideas?

I can't remember my best score with 3DMark03 (it's at home) but that score was achieved using the "performance" settings in the ATI control panel. As I remember it was close to yours. My normal scores are about 1700 to 2100 depending on settings. Since those were so much lower than the ones I saw posted by others, I set it all to "performance" just to see what change there would be. About double. I then put the settings back to "Quality"... the highest quality on about everything. That's where I like to 'fly'... framerates are good (consistantly 25 to 30, locked at 30), I don't have the notorious "blurries", and MOST IMPORTANTLY I don't have those dang hiccups or stutters .... it's fluid and smooth unless I go to something like FlyTampa's airport (which is my benchmark for trying any new change... it's getting better all the time and when I get THAT airport smooth I will have reached 'perfection' in my mind). Even flying low over the Northern California Mesh scenery is smooth and stable.While that 3DMark03 benchmark was running I noticed a huge difference in that program using the "performance" settings. My normal "quality" settings made some of the benchmark games look more like a slide show at 1 to 3 FPS. At "performance" those tests jumped up to a playable 15 to 20 FPS. The first tests using the bombers and fighters were smooth with either setting and looked nicer, of course, with the "quality" settings.If I did any other game other than FS2K2, like a first person shooter or something else with that kind of action, I'd switch to the performance settings for it then back to quality for flying. If you've been to Rage3D you might have noticed their tweak program available for free. I use it and from the toolbar you can change all the settings to predetermined combinations quickly, in addition to tweaking the card with settings not available in the stock control panel.I've got a Dell 8200 P4 2.4 768MB so my machine is close to yours in capabilities. I have not stopped tweaking and changing settings yet... I wanna be ready for FS9 or whatever it ends up being called.