While sitting here looking at my old FS box, I got to thinking about how a lot of people are saying the "Old" 533 Mhz FSB P4's are slow. This machine was currently pulling duty surfing the web and doing word proc. chores for my wife. She was just given a new laptop from the school where she works so I got my box back.I spent about 3 hours cleaning it up, reinstalling XPPro, 3DMark2001 / 2003 and FS9. The only tweaks I applied were to disable services not needed, defrag the HD and set the bios back to Version 1009C, make sure I was running all the latest drivers and patches for my hardware and OS EXCEPT for SP1.The machine I speak of is a:3.06 P4 533Mhz FSB at 150Mhz FSB for 3.45 Ghz, 100% stable with stock Intel HSF unit.512 Megs PC1066 Rambus9700Pro 128 with Zalman Heatpipe w 40mm fan on cold plate at 405 / 371ASUS P4T533-C MB80Gig WD HD w 8Meg CacheCoolermaster atc-111 case w 5 80mm thermaltake fans, 4 on Rheostat Fanbus.Soundblaster Live ValueRunning the latest intel INF driversOmega Drivers based on Cat 3.6'sCreative DriversAfter editing the FS9 config file with the usual entries, I found that besides the known menu flickering issue, I experienced none of the issues posted about FS9. It looks fantastic, framerate locked at 30 w it constant 90% of the time w all sliders except clouds and autogen at 90% or better. To be honest it seems to run FS9 better than it did 2002. Just for giggles I ran 3DMark2001SE / 3DMark2003 / PCMark2002. The links are below. Even I didn't think I would see over 19K in 2001SE but it did. I was also very surprised to see just (14 points) shy of 6K in 3DMark2003. All this w aircooling. Just for stability checks I ran 2001SE for a 3 hour loop and Sandra for 3 hours. 100% stable :)3DMark2001SE: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6956345PCMark2002: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm=13161963DMark2003: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=1246602The point of this thread is that although it's nice to run the latest and greatest hardware, you don't always need it to see some very impressive performance figures. The price of the P4B's and the motherboards and memory to run them are dropping at a nice rate. So if your on a budget, look no further than a good old P4B, some PC3200 or PC1066 Rambus and enjoy.Now before someone points out the fact that the box was nicely overclocked, what was done was nothing more than FSB increases with some box stock mods. Well within the abilities of most of the people on the forum. Even a 2.4 running on an ASUS or ABIT MB and 512 megs of OCZ/Corsair PC3200 and a 9700Pro will come in at under $600. Turn the wick up to say 2.8 and turn up the 9700 and FS9 will surely shine.I was going to sell this machine but after seeing the numbers it's capable of.....Maybe not :) Besides, there's rumours of a Quad channel Rambus board from SIS... Hmmm...............Bobby

I'm wondering if some cooling will help my recently purchase 9800 NP and if so what the best solution would be? I have taken the VPU up to 410MHz with no artifacts being visible whatsoever, but my GRAM starts to barf above 322MHz. By barf I mean very slight artifacts become noticeable above this speed. The artifacts are very noticeable at 350MHz. This is with Samsung GC2A memory that should be capable of getting up to 350MHz and perhaps beyond. Mind you ATI may have speed binned lower yielding GC2A for the early 9800 NPs...I opened the case yesterday and ran 3dMark2001 and noticed that the GRAM chips do get pretty hot to touch (accurate measurement :-)), so I'm thinking that I don't need additional VPU cooling, but I'm wondering if small sinks on the memory may make a difference? I'm a little bit doubtfull, but interested to hear your opinions. Joe

Joe,I gained about 12-15Mhz on my memory core speeds with theaddition of small HS's.I gained about the same on my core clock with the Zalman heatpipe once I added the small fan to what would be the cold plate side of it.You have to realize that I purchased my 9700 the day it was available and wound up getting a very good piece of silicon. You may or may not have a good card to OC. I have seen as much as 20Mhz OC difference between 4 of the same cards. Somewhat called the luck of the draw. :(Hope this answered your ?

Ah, here you are. We've more or less got the same thread going in the other forum...Anyway, appreciate the feedback. 12 to 15MHz increase would get me to almost 9800 PRO memory speed. Not that I would ever see the difference, but it would be of symbolic significance :-).Yep, well aware of the luck of the draw side to overclocking. I found the data sheet for Samsung K4D26323RA-GC2A, 2.86ns memory and it actually states that the maximum speed is 2.86ns, but that the guaranteed speed is 4ns. This is a whopping 100MHz range between minimum guaranteed and maximum speeds. Interestingly the default clock for the 9800 NP, 290MHz, corresponds to the average of those two speeds, i.e. 3.43ns. Maybe coincidental. The 2.86ns GC2A is however the same stuff used in the 9800 PRO, so I'm guessing that ATI and/or Samsung have speed binned lower yielding GC2A for the early 9800NP's or they may have upped memory timings in the bios for the NP? Who knows.Anyway, thanks, you have answered my ?Joe

Hi, "framerate locked at 30 w it constant 90% of the time w all sliders except clouds and autogen at 90% or better. To be honest it seems to run FS9 better than it did 2002. "This is what's I have been always thinking, latest system = better fps and less trouble :-), same thing at the fs2002 release, and after a while new higher system available in the market, the WOW start to came out later, I can run fs2002 at full with higher fps and constant etc.. I remember in fs2002, FPS hit with autogen, yup 2d clouds fps hit, water reflection fps hit etc..Solution; new system= more FPS, less trouble for tweaking same thing for fs2002.Little example with fs2002, there have been tons of these at the fs2002 release and morehttp://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...ID10/43273.htmlhttp://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...ID10/43280.htmlhttp://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...ID10/43180.htmlhttp://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...ID10/43112.htmlhttp://www.flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/DC...ID10/43053.htmlRegardsChris