Spent the weekend here in icy, slippery Portland upgrading my box. Went from an Athlon 2500+ OCd to 3200+ on an Abit NF7-S with one gig of Samsung 3200 dual channel memory, to an Athlon 64 3500+ on an Asus AV8 Deluxe with the same memory config. I switched the XT800 Platinum and Soundblaster Audigy Gamer I bought three months ago over as well. All I can say is what a difference. Flew from Seattle to Portland in the C310, 10,000 feet with real weather, with FPS pegged at 24. Settings were 60% on the terrain elevation detail, full on texture quality, land effects only, special effects about half the scale, dense scenery, very dense auto gen, extended textures on, 1084 x 1032 (or close to that), massive textures, AA at one notch below quality in the ATI control panel, Lights and texture at halfway, bilinear filtering and dawn/dusk and weather transitions on. I keep traffic at about 50% - and have a ton of Project AI installed.In the PMDG 737 with VC, no cabin, I experimented with upping the fps limit to 27, with similar restults. On a flight from KSEA to KSFO, again, didn't drop down at all, and was able to fly it in VC pretty much the entire way. And very smooth which makes flying this great plane even better. Best thing is the processor cost around $300, the mobo about $150. I've read the 64 3500+, 939 pin version, OCs well - so there is probably room to get it up near 4000+ with a bit of tinkering. In the interests of full disclosure, my grapics card was a brute cost-wise, but in this system, it really, really shines. The Athlong 64s are a great value choice. It's still hard to find the 939 pin motherboards, especially those with SLI (FS9 does not support the dual card process at this time, wonder if FS10 will). But I found my stuff at Fry's in Portland (last ones in stock that day though). So if you have been thinking about it, it might not seem like going from an OC'd 2500+ at 3200+ to a 64 at 3500+ would make that much of a difference. But with the mobo, the graphics card and the processor all working great in sink (going to 8x AGP wasn't such a bad thing either), the difference was really, really striking.

Good review. I like to hear these things. Can you give us some before and after frames-per-second contrasts and other kinds of improvements you have seen? Thanks,RH

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.actually it is pretty dangerous trying to get up to Crown Point in the gorge during the ice storm, or should I say 'silver thaw'...

By far the most important improvement has been in smoothness - which for me means that the sim stays right at the FPS limit and in general don't drop. Right now I'm pegging the system at 27 with my most complicated planes, and 80% of the time it's hitting the peg. That for me is the most imporant because the planes fly a lot smoother and are much, much easier to control. Hope this helps.