Having upgraded my CPU to an XP 2100 and my old voodoo 3 card to a Ti4600 I was still rather disappointed with frame rates and general performance compared with systems of similar hardware, a 3D benchmark of 8033 was my best!! Reading this forum it became apparent that maybe the motherboard was the weakest link - I was correct. Today I had a ABIT Nforce2 board put in and oh my lord - just awesome - more FPS than I know what to do with!! The benchmark now - 12130.Just thought that I would share that with you for those among you who may be considering an upgrade.Processor: AMD AMD Athlon XP 2100+ @ 1.73 GHzGraphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600Total Physical Memory: 512 MBMotherboard Manufacturer: http://www.abit.com.tw/Motherboard Model: NF7-S/NF7-M/NF7 (nVidia-nForce2)

Thx, that is great advice as I am just about to upgrade my computer, I have the choice between a faster processor, a new vid card, or a new mobo plus RAm, and I can only afford one of them. I guess I will go for the new mobo+ram as it can also be considered as an investment in the future. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that I will have to do a complete reinstall of all the addons and stuff, or is there another way?Alex

I got a new mobo too, running an AMD 2400 XP, Gigabyte GA7VAXP, and I'm only getting 8600 on my scores. I think the RAM is holding me back, so I'll have to upgrade from the PC2100 512 up to at least PC2700 512. This hobby just gets more expensive, as I ask for more and more.

I have the specs listed below in my sig. I also have an Intel D845HV board. Could this be a weak part of the system? That's a wonderful score for a slower system btw! I keep getting around 7000.

Why would the mobo make such a difference? Any idea?-Basil

Well, the nForce2 is FFAASSTT!

Bus speed might be higher, or the chipsets that drive the busses might be better on some boards than others. Also, the drivers that control those chipsets are very important... I upgraded the one for my motherboard (Asus A7M266), and I nearly doubled my 3DMark score.

Is that in 3DMARK2001 SE?I've not tested mine yet with any benchmarking software but the reviewers only got 14,694 and yours is only a XP2100+.Mind you, their review was prior to ATi Catalyst 3.0 and DirectX 9(WQML), and this machine gave one of the P4 3.06Ghz systems a darn good thrashing.

I agreeI had a a7a266 mobo and a 1.4cpu with 512meg ddr 266 pc2100, I popped in a 2400xp cpu and my 3dmark score actually dropped about 5% and my fs frames increased about 5-10%I bought a a7n8x board with the nividia chips and my 3dmark score doubled along with my fs framesTomorrow I,m picking up 1gig of the ddr 400mhz pc3200 and I am looking forward to see what that does.looking forward to the new fx vid cardsFloydCyvr

Yeah, let us know what the new memory does. Lobaeux

So you guys are saying that changing your motherboard to the NForce2 chipset doubled your framerates, or something like that... If you did not mention it, what were you upgrading from?Robb

Hey guys, also stick with the 40.72 Nvidia drivers, the 41.09 just caused me a big problem, iledgible numbers, flickering night graphics etc etc. The 30.82 also work well but you will see your benchmark scores drop by 450 if you use them.I just took a brief evening hop to Simflyers KLAX with Active Sky and you could have been there - totally awesome!One of you said that this is an expensive hobby, you are right but if we werent simming we would only be getting into trouble with women or alcohol! Final advice avoid AIDS - Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome!

Robb,I upgraded from an Asus a7a266 to the Nforce2 each extra FPS cost me 5 cents - what a great deal!

I can even fly Ralph's Ready for Pushback 747 now, I get fairly respectable frame rates - 20-25 in fact, before it was unflyable I was beginning to think I had wasted my money on that one!The Captain Sim 727-200 in the Cougar livery is breathtaking!

lend us a corner of your wallet would you!!!!!Duke