CPU

[Guest Rob]

Hi Gosta,Above my processor, the 2400+, there are currently the 2600+, 2700+ and 2800+ with Thoroughbred chips. I don't think they'll be taking the thoroughbred much higher .. with the Barton now becoming more available.AMD in the last month have released 1600+/1800+ chips with Thoroughbred chips .. as opposed to the ageing Palomino build .. that seem to be EXCELLENT for overclocking.Although I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to get ... I'm about to order some fast RAM -- most probably OCZ. My 2400+ is currently air-cooled and running at 28*C/82*F. If you consider 70*C as a limit for Athlon's ... I have SOME overclocking to do!!Although .. always ensure you have a decent motherboard when attempting overclocking .. even if the components are of a high quality.

[gosta 0]

Hi Rob,I just upgraded my motherboard, so the CPU will be a couple of months off... The performance increase I have seen over the past couple of months was quite impressive - First I upgraded the graphics card (a friend had an offer I just couldn't refuse), and smoothness and picture quality improved a lot. Then came the motherboard and RAM, with a further increase in smoothness and quite a noticable increase in FPS. Now the bottleneck is the CPU, which will be replaced next (along with some extra RAM). As to CPU temperature, mine doesn't run very hot, either - with the fan that came with it, it runs at around 30-36 degrees Celsius.My current system specs are:AMD Athlon 1GHz,Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (upgrade from Radeon 7200 64MB),Asus A7N8X Deluxe (from Asus A7S-LE),512MB Samsung PC2700 RAM (from 256MB PC133 RAM)I hope that my system specs will be quite respectable by the time FS9 comes around...Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg