Thanks for the reply, i'll try the MS patch whan i get home.

It's XP SP2, sorry about that.

I did try out the AMD optimizer and it made no difference.

One thing i tried this morning was that i use a 2 monitor setup, when i disable the second monitor, it runs smooth again, same as if i have both enabled but turn off the acceration on the second monitor, runs smooth again.
It's never done that before on the old cpu, worked great then.

Also to add, i have tried 2 different installs of XP, the other being my games only drive, that has up to date drivers on everything but same results in Maya now.

If i went out and got that dreded vista, would this solve my problems with the dual core ?

MS patches are only for MS's own games.