Premiere CS3 raised the level of hardware needed for trouble-free use, but even with such hardware many users reported finding it somewhat more "crash-y" than CS2, particularly for large projects.

CS4 seems to have again raised the optimal hardware requirements for stable use. My question is: does running CS3 on CS4-level hardware (lets say a Core i7 quad-core processor with 6GB DDR3 memory) resolve most of the glitches CS3 is prone to, or do people with powerful systems still have problems with CS3?

CS3 was just as buggy and crashy when I moved to my new zoomy workstation, but I have noticed a huge improvement in stability after moving to Vista 64 with 20Gigs of RAM.

It's much more stable WITHOUT Cineform than with it, curiously. I almost never have a crash or lockup when using native PPro projects, although I haven't done many of them.

I've installed 1.5, 2.0, cs3 & cs4 and personally find 2.0 the best/most stable. It seemed the cutting point as far as performance and features - as far as I can tell it isn't missing any features from the newer versions that I find necessary and is perfectly capable of handling HD projects once you install a good encoder (I use one from MainConcept).

I import my AVCHD data with VoltaicHD and save as avi for editing, works great

FWIW:
I managed to reach what I'd call an "acceptable degree of instability"
(not more than one crash a day)
of my Vista32+CS3+Cineform Prospect HD NLE
only after:
a) disabling SuperFetch
b) installing CleanMem
c) raising IncreaseUserVa to 2560

For all I know,
it might make no technical sense whatsover
(I'm no geek), but on MY machine it appears to work,
and it very very seldom reaches the much dreaded 2GB level...
Needless to say, I (often) uncross my fingers
only to press the save button (Premiere's autosave
has its own, impenetrable logic).

(BTW: Dell Precsion T7400, 1 Xeon E5430, 4GB RAM, 6TB storage)

Vasco