Bonzai, what's the difference between a 450 and 500? Maybe a lot. The amd 500 tbird for example accesses memory in a very different way from the old conventional bus systems that a 450 would belong to. The differences may have less to do with a 50 mhz speed gap and more to do with MB archetecture. But all that aside, I do wonder if there is something else with your system that is causing the errors. A custom driver? Custom DLL? Who knows. And since its below specs and soon to become a dinosaur, why bother to find out? Don't take me wrong. My laptop is a 450 and I'm not at all excited about having to replace it. Its just that computers are becoming more and more powerful and many companies writing software are starting to take that into account.