I just bought an athlon system in Dec...this is what I found out. Some may help you and some might not :( 1) Make sure your have the newest drivers for your video card..the drivers on that video card are new and very young..they need a lot of work :( Try running Carrara in software/d3d/open gl modes...my computer was freaking on d3d. 2) In your bios settings you should see an agp multiplier..try bumping it down from 4x to 2x or 1x. Most athlon motherboards have BAD agp design. 3) My computer for about a week kept crashing to the desktop in the render room..the ultimate fix was to upgrade my Via motherboard 4 in 1 drivers to the latest version. The Athlon processor is amazing..it runs pretty hot but in terms of price to perfermance I think its the best....it just needs a bit of tweaking.