You certainly have the cptr to drive CFS3.
Did you install CFS3 Update, 9b DirectX, current video drivers?
Card:
4x FSAA and Anisotropic filtering.  Quality others
CFS3 Config/File/Custom
Intial slider set 4,5,4,4,4,3
Window/Overrides:
Disable Intro Movie
Disable Dual Pass Render
Enable High Resolution Z  Buffer (very important and check prior to several following sessions)
Other stuff as default or desired
In CFS3 try 1152X864 at 16
Modify as necssary.

     Piper,

     That definitely blows.  If you do not know what Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering are, you soon will... you own CFS3!
     Since you have a Geforce card, and quite a new one as well, I would especially play around with the settings for these.  When you install an nVidia driver (and you should have intstalled quite a new one off of a CD when you installed the card, or else the driver shoud have come installed along with your new computer, if that was the case)... where was I?  Oh right, when an nVidia driver is installed, it should dump a Utility of some sort in your Windows Control Panels.  Look for any kind of nVidia application there.  Or if it is not there, do a right-click on your desk top, look under properties, hit the Settings tab, then Advanced, and an entire utility for messing about with your Geforce card should appear.
     My advice (and I had a Geforce for a long time) is to not rely to heavily upon nVidia's drivers.  Those people release a new driver every three to eight days, usually claiming something along the lines of "40% performance increase!"  Bollocks.  If you are running Windows, get your nVidia drivers from Windows Updates at Microsoft.com.  The newest drivers on the nVidia website are not yet WHQL certitified, and not digitally signed by Microsoft.  This could conceivably feck things up... conceivably, not definitely.
     Finally, try all of the famous "Ramsa's Tweaks" right here in this forum:

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=cfs3;action=display;num=10...

     There's a wealth of information online for tweaking CFS3.  If you did that well on FS2002, you'll do well on CFS3, it will simply require an extraordinary amount of patience, trial and error, and possibly alcohol.  Look at my system specs in my signature... I still don't get perfect CFS3 performance.  In fact, it's quite South of perfect.

     Good luck.

     Yello.

     No, I don't think you're dumb.  Sorry, I never seem to learn that sarcasm doesn't display well on the web.
    
     I agree with you about the CFS3 UI though... pretty sparse!  It's so odd that they included a seperate application (CFS3Config.exe) to tweak the system.  They probably threw that in a week or so before the game was released!
     Oh, do you know about that?  The CFS3Config application?  Maybe that's what you're looking for.  That's where you want to make most of your display setting adjustments... not within the game itself... it's located in your main Combat Flight Simulator 3 folder, and it actually does allow you to make quite specific adjustments.  There's (suprisingly) some good tips on how to use the CFSConfig program on the Microsoft CFS3 Insider website.
     Anyway, try those "Ramsa" tweaks, mess about with the CFS3Config, and you'll get it all sorted eventually.  You have a solid video card, so.

     -bostin', mate.