Hardware experiments today... and questions

I'm building a machine for a friend so I have some good parts parts laying around the house right now, so I figured its a good time to experiment and see what FS2004 really needs. I used my system as the baseline (P2.4 533FSB running at 2.9 with 512MB PC2700 and a 4200Ti card and latest drivers) Everyone knows with AA and AF turned up on these cards they take a large hit in framerate. I ran a test with AA4 and AF8 at the default Seattle start up fair weather, all settings maxed out in the King Air... I got a pitiful 9 fps sitting on the ground. I then installed his Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB, same settings and the frames jumped all the way upto 19!! I flew a circuit and landing only dropped to 13, very ILS flyable I must say!Now heres the interesting part... my friends machine is a 2.8 800FSB, 512MB of 400 ram, and my machine is getting better frame rates in the same situation... 4 fps more. So I figured I'm gonna up the anti and see what this 2.8 will do... I had that thing upto 3.4 and I couldn't get any better frame rate than the 14-15 I was getting at 2.8! I later tried turning my speed down and then back up, and the framerates followed accordingly... his motherboard is the P4P800 deluxe, mine is the P4S533. So are the types of CPU/mobo having an effect on performance?The only other differences are I am running XP Pro patched, and he has XP Home unpatched.. but that shouldn't make all that much difference?So my question then is videocard related... how does a 9600 Saphire 256MB compare to a 9800 128MB?? Similar performance? I seem to be reading that the 9600 is a hot little card and half the price (and my tests show that as well)I always said I'd never goto 2004, but unfortuneately 2002 is being left behind... and now that I've actually been able to enjoy it for a little while it ain't *that* bad I guess... (Except my PSS 777 won't work!!)Chris