Hi everyone,Last week I upgraded my system as follows :P4 3GHZ Prescott, Asus P4C800 E deluxe, Maxtor Sata 150 GIG, Corsair twin 3200 1 GIG RAM, Sony DVD-R-RW, Sony diskette drive, Soundblaster Audigy 2 + HHS-1000 external decoder, Asus 800XT 256MB video card AGP 8X, Thermaltake case with 6 coolers, Creative 6.1 speakers, Sony 19inch flatscreen. Windows XP Professional service pack 1.I updated my bios,installed all XP pro updates, installed creative updated drivers, DirectX 9b and latest asus drivers (8.03 i think an named catalyst on the screen during install)That was the good news.Now for the bad part :Installed FS9 without problems, fired her up and took a random flight with the C172 with the video card settings at high quality and FS9 scenery at the highest quality settings. My jaw fell open : unbelieveable quality and minimum 70-80 FPS, super smooth even with very complex weather.I also changed frequently between windowed and full screen mode, changed the weather, even view changes were unbelievable fast and smooth without any stutters or other flaws. I quit FS9 to install PMDG 737 and then : CTD ! I deleted the FS9 config file started up again but no avail : I get the startup screen but it hangs and task manager says : does not react and i get everytime an error report.I did a reinstall of FS9 twice but I keep getting the same program errors.Very frustrated I installed Far Cry, started up the game and got a CTD... took a peak at the Far Cry forum and noticed that lots of people are having CTD's with ATI cards, etc. restarted the game from the beginning and got a severe crash : complete PC switch off and black screen and screaming sound . I did a complete reinstall of the sound and video card (and removed the Far Cry game...) and DX9b but still the same problems with FS9 : good startup the first time, amazing quality and then ... " program does not react" or something similar and with a restart the program hangs...I thought I fried up my sound and video card but I can watch DVD's with amazing quality and digital sound via the external decoder. When I startup windows with the external decoder the start up sound is distorted but goes away when I reset the decoder switch from decoder to pc-audio and back.Can someone help please ? I thought I had a dream system to fly PMDG 737NG but now it is worse than before. my former system was the same as above but P4 2.4 GHZ, Asus P4G8X deluxe and Asus 5590 Ultra 256 MB with smooth perfomance and reasonable frame rates.Thanks !

To check if your system is stable run prime 95 torture test, 3dmark2001se or 3dmark03 some loops. Also always watch out for artifacts.To test your memory try memtest86.FS 2004 is quite demanding it can be your Prescott that get overheated?? Check the temps you get on heavy load too but if temp is the problem you should hang in prime95 torture test or blend test. You should run it at least 12 hours to make sure you are stable.

The CPU temp is checked by Asus Probe tool. When I ran FS with all sliders maxed and very high FPS, temperature was 50 C

It could be your CPU, it could be your video card, it could be your add ons.But first you really need to see if your computer are stable. Run prime 95 torture test for 12 hours if you don

> Now for the bad part :Installed FS9 without problems, fired her up and took a random flight with the C172 with the video card settings at high quality and FS9 scenery at the highest quality settings. My jaw fell open : unbelieveable quality and minimum 70-80 FPS, super smooth even with very complex weather. < What's bad about that? Frankly, Dimi, apart from your display adapter, it isn't much of an upgrade in computing power terms. The 3 gig Prescott performs like a 2.8 GHz Northwood AFAIK. So following the '100% more MHz = 40% more computing power' rule, you've gained less than 8%. If you can, run down to the shop, exchange your Prescott for the 3.0 GHz Northwood and you'ld be much better off. You didn't mention your PS. My guess is here. The heat those Prescott monsters want to produce, doesn't come from nowhere you know. Good luck and kind regards Jaap

Yes though Prescotts is a dead end for Intel if I was going to replace it it wouldn

No where in you installation list do I see that you installed the MOBO controller chip drivers for WinXP, i.e., Intel, VIA, SiS, AMD, ALi, NForce. If you didn't install these drives, downloaded updated drivers, then try you tests again.You might try removing 512MB of RAM to see if the problem is corrected.W. Sieffert