First of all,thanks both of you to have te pacient to answer all these question. I learned a lot from you now.The ultimate question is:Is it worth to get into a risky new hobby (as Greg said) for how many fps in the FS9?Alex how many fps you get more with your tweaked system compared with no overclocking?Cheers Heinz

Heinz,as I said before I cannot tell you how many fps you will gain. First of all I have a setup that I am sure is not in any way comparable to yours. I am running a huge homecockpit with three monitors and lots of additional hardware, I have a very fast graphics card (9800XT) I am also running a lot of addons like Ultimate Traffic, Active Sky and lots of scenery. I am using DF's Cessna C310. I am using 4xFSAA and 8xAF. I have no idea what graphics setings you have. However I would say for my setup that going from 166 FSB to 210 gave me a boost of let us say 20-30%. FS9 was not usable with my settings and hardware before I did it. Now I am getting above 20 fps even with all my addons most of the time. When using the default scenery and planes and do not use the additional monitors my FPS are through the roof. So what does it mean to you? I am afraid nothing. I have no idea how your vid card scales to the CPU and memory speed. But as I said if you can reach an FSB of 40 to 50 MHz more the change will not be subtle.AlexBTW, I am poking in the upgrade dark myself. I will get a tax return soon, and have no idea whether I should upgarde to a new mobo and an Athlon64 or go for one of these new video card monsters. Any ideas anybody? Greg?

Hi Alex,"BTW, I am poking in the upgrade dark myself. I will get a tax return soon, and have no idea whether I should upgarde to a new mobo and an Athlon64 or go for one of these new video card monsters. Any ideas anybody? Greg?"I recently picked up a new 9800 Pro for a net cost of $50US (after selling my 9700 Pro). Brought it home and pulled that wimpy little cooler off and saw the card had an R360 core on it. So I did a bit of research and found a BIOS that would work with the card and I'm running stable and artifact free at 425/398. That's my upgrade for the next few months!I like the new video cards coming onto the market now, but I'll fly the new one for a few months. In studying the benchies for the X800 Pro, this 9800 I have now isn't too far behind... certainly not far enough to warrant me spending the money to go to an X800 Pro.I'm doing the same thing with the CPU-MB-Memory. I'll wait until this fall to see what's available to make the change over to an AMD 64 bit based system.Depending upon how much money you want to spend, the new Athlon 64 3400+ is said to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. Does as well as the FX series CPUs at about half the cost. I'd keep your 9800XT for the time being and maybe wait for the X800 XT or even the PE. They'll be good and fast... expensive, too.Heinz... if you're interested in overclocking, I recommend that you play with the system you have now. Do some research and start playing with it. A good place to visit is http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13Once you've found the strengths and weaknesses of your current system you can upgrade as required... and then overclock even further! :-)Greg

He, he, here is a little upgrade:Now that it is getting warmer outside and the room temperatures also increase I found that the 209 FSB are not that stable after all. I had the occasional crash. So I had to turn it down to 205 MHz. As I hate to loose performance and need every bit of it with my setup I was looking for alternatives. So I went out and got a top notch cooler. A Themalright SLK-900. I did not experiment long. I increased the Core voltage to 1,85V, and the multi to 12. It has stayed there ever since. My poor old CPU is running at 2460 MHz now. Sandra thinks it is a XP 3600+. Sandra thinks it is lot faster than the 3200+. Full load 55 Celsius. Rock solid and stable. The performance boost was huge as it scales wonderfully with my 9800XT. I am a very happy camper, and I will go with your suggestion Greg to wait until early winter for the next HW upgrade. Hmm, maybe faster RAM a little earlier :-).AlexP.S.: Heinz, have you started your little adventure already?