My computer shop which has built all of my computers for me over the past 8 plus years will try to insure that what ever system I am building now, will be upgradeable for at least one more generation. That is can the motherboard be upgraded to use faster CPU. Most of the rest of the system components are pretty much interchangeable between systems except for the video cards. What I try to do there is to get the best video card for that particular system so that "ALL" of the components are nearly balanced or matched in performance. You would put a high performance drive train in a car with only a factory stock four cylinder motor. You just would not have the horsepower needed to allow those components to work as designed. Also building a computer to run a particular game/program, you have to insure that even with all of the best performance parts, the program was written to take advantage of it. I have always thought a lot of our problems with speed and image quality in any version of MS Flight Simulators is not as much due to our individual computers as is the language/code the programs have been written in. I believe that is what is holding back our fastest Intel and AMD machines from really shining.Until MS starts writing in the same code that the other popular fast games are, we will continue to see less than optimum performance even on brand new computers.Terry

I just did an upgrade and went with the AMD3500+ which is clocked at 2.2Ghz ( I was looking at a P4 3.4 based system as well). My other system is a P4 2.8. The new amd system has an x800 256 card and the P4 sys, a TI4200 128. I now use the P4 based system for my design projects and the amd setup is exclusively for FS.I had heard that AMD was more effecient per clock cycle, but could not believe the difference. Since the word is that FS is cpu dependant, I have to say that the amd is vastly superior to the P4 (IMHO). I understand that there are other factors involved but I can honestly/conservatively say that I get about 3 times the performance from my new system.I set up an identical scenario (all same settings) at our CYWG airport with 100% AI (PAI and lots of it), with thunderstorms.My old system struggled to maintain 17 frames where the new sys was locked at 60 and occasionally dipped to the low 50's.Again, I'm not a computer wizard, but I can say with certainty that my new amd based system makes a total mockery out of my P4 system.Adam

I am just about to get an AMD 64 FX55 - I will let you know what the increase in frame rates is (surrently using an AMD XP 2800+M.

Hi,In next couple of weeks I'll be upgrading from:AthlonXP 2.600+ASUS A7V8X512 RAMMSI NVidia 5200 128 MBto:Athlon64 3.800+MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI1024 Kingston Dual RAM (5 x 512)MSI NVidia NX 6600GT 128 MBWas as far as my budget could go! I'm putting a lot of faith in it...I'll let you all know how it goes once its all set up.[]'s

I've been tracking the prices on the AMD64 FX53, The price at Newegg had been dropping a month ago and then stopped at $727. I was surprised to see last week the price start going up. It's now $749. A simple case of supply and demand or something else? Fitz