And re the topic of the thread: integrated vid chips are generally not the way to go with graphically intense applications such as cfs3. You really need to have a proper vid card to be able to enjoy cfs3.
I recall a FAQ page at microsoft dealing with problems with the intel integrated vid chip. Have a look there :
http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs3/support.asp
Simviation Forums
Flight Simulator and other chat
After playing around with every single texture setting there is I finally found the one which fixes the problem totally! Under the Over-rides section of the CFS3 config i checked off the 'Disable texture mips" box and it worked great! Thanks everyone for your help 
