I am currently running a P4 Northwood 3.0Ghz @ 3.4Ghz 227x15 and I am thinking of purchase the P4 Prescott 3.4Ghz. The big question/s will I see an improvement in FS9 and can I overclock the Prescott to 3.85 227x17?Regards,Andrew.

I have my 3.2 prescott oc'ed to 3.7 so the answer is yes. the first thing you may notice with the prescott's is the temps they operate at. my prescott idles at about 42. my 2.6 northwood idled at 29.

Are you using standard cooling. Does the high temp impact on the performance or was it designed to run hot. I am using a AeroFlow VP4-c7040 cooler on the Northwood I am planning to use this on Prescott 3.4GAndrew,

The best you could hope for is a 13% improvement, which is the direct ratio increase from 3.4GHz to 3.85GHz Given that Prescotts perform a little slower at the same clock speed as Northwoods (check out tomshardware, anandtech, hardocp, etc to verify is you wish), and you never yield the full CPU increase ratio when it comes to real world applications like FS2004, I reckon you'd be pushing to see a 5-10% boost in performance.IMO, don't bother and save your $$ for a more revolutionary upgrade. Gary

Hi Gary, I hate to contradict, but AFAIK, the performance increase isn't linear. I belielve a good rule of thumb is: Doubling the CPU speed, results in ca. 40% more performance. In this case it would thus only result in a couple of %. So, as you might guess, I totally share your your conclusion. People seeking more performance should maybe also consider a technology change? Good luck and kind regards Jaap