yeah, i just saw the whisper you sent me after doing an advanced search, haha. i'm feelin' ya on the mac pro wishes. on the other hand, i'm waiting to buy a new intel pc setup that i can run a vanilla install on. maybe that's the way to go. i hate to give up on AMD, but if these issues we're having can't be fixed or figured out, what choice do i have? i still have some hope though, otherwise i would have given up weeks ago.