I will only be able to build to the planes can't put them in the game due to the fact the video card will not play the game so as soon as i get the money up for a better machine I will just build planes until I can put them in the game and get the basics up for testing

damn old machine will the good news is I will still be building planes.
Taz
Hi Taz,
try a few tweaks to lessen the load on the video card. Remember when this game first came out, video cards were pretty low end. I
upgraded to an FX5200 and with diligent tweaking it worked fine!
Try with all the sliders down low in the cfsconfig.exe, then slowly work up the aircraft slider one or two notches and see if the game remains playable.
Remember that strangely CFS3 works best on the highest normal resolution for your monitor, it does not improve if you drop the screen resolution. BUT you might have to drop colour depth this makes a big difference to a strained video card.
On the custom config settings in cfsconfig, turn a lot of things off - reflections, water movement, whatever else you can get away with - g Force blackouts, advisor messages targeting cone etc etc.
Once config is set to low undemanding levels, tweak your video card settings hopefully with proprietary software. Again look for things a few notches below perfect display settings, that reduce load on the video card. If you don't have software with your card you could use Riva Tuner.
Make sure the bios settings for the video card are optimal - largest suitable aperture settings, highest AGP setting if you are still on an AGP card, etc.
Hope this is not trying to tell you how to suck eggs
D