onehunga,
I do not see the need to spend the extra money to go from an AthlonXP 2500+ (running at 1.83Ghz) to a 3000+ (running either 2.10Ghz w/400Mhz FSB or 2.16Ghz w/333Mhz FSB) when the AthlonXP 2500+ will overclock to 3200+ speeds and more.
Running a 2500+ even without overclocking on an nForce2 Motherboard with 512Mb of RAM and either the Radeon 9800Pro or the GeForceFX 5900XT should get you maxed out on Flight Sim 2k4.
It is an excellent performer for the money.
Take Care,
Richard
P.S. If you want to go faster, a pair of SATA Hard Drives on the SATA RAID would cut down your Disk Access Time in Windows.
