Hi,Thought some of you using P4 CPUs with Northwood and Prescott cores might be interested in this article:http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/p4-throttling/Prior to upgrading the heatsink and fan on my P4 2.4 Northwood with the intention of cutting down the noise generated by the fan supplied with the processor, I did a little research and came across the above interesting article. I must say I found it very reassuring and it also made me wonder just how relevant the claims are that P4 CPU overheating can, at times, be responsible for poor performance in FS9.However, it seems that the other side of the coin may be far less reassuring for those of us who may be flirting at the cutting edge of currently available technology:http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041114/p4_560-07.htmlAnyway, it's some food for thought.Mike

One of the options I disabled in the BIOS right after I installed new motherboard and CPU...

One of the more interesting aspects in that article is the measurement of the relative temperature differences between the Northwood and Prescott chips. Like many other published tests, they also find the Prescott to be very much the hotter of the two both at idle and under load. Anyone upgrading to a Prescott needs to take special note of the cooling capability of their present/new case as there is more than enough heat generated by that CPU to cause problems with other heat-sensitive components (video cards, audio cards, etc.) if the case cooling is sub-par. As to the problem of thermal-throttling degrading FS9, I've never thought much about it. If the chip is running that hot you'll probably be using a new one soon anyway so no use worrying :-) .DougP4 3.0C SL6WK @ 3.510 (1.600 VCore - 234 FSB) | Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1019) | 2x512MB Corsair TWINX CXM3700 (3-4-4-8) | 4x120GB WD 7200 IDE) | Hercules 9800 Pro (128MB @ 410/360) | A-Open 1648 AAP | Plextor 708A | Enermax 431W PSU | Inwin Case | Stock Intel HSF