8800gt and screen resolutions XP vs Vista

So I am trying to update my rig and I need a graphics card upgrade my ati 1600 pro ddr1 wasn't getting it done(got it for free*). So finally I picked up an 8800gt 512 a few weeks ago and got great gaming performance but had a bunch of resolution and display problems

I have 2 displays a 22" wide 1680 x 1050 and a 19" 1280 x 1024 on the 1600 pro I had a entended display setup which honestly I loved. When I got my 8800 gt could not get an extended desktop to work on XP 32bit or XP 64bit as I have a dual boot setup. Tried everything from beta drivers and anything inside nvidia control panal so see if I could get it to work. (tryed custom resolutions for forever) Other problems I had was the only 16:10 ratio option I got was 1680X1050. So the harder games had to use 16:9 or 4:3 ratios and I hated that. Ended up placing my 19inch in storage and wished I had picked up an ati 3870 instead. came really close to posting for help but sortof just gave up.

So vista prices dropped a little bit and I picked up a copy of 32bit home prem this past week knowing full well sp1 was comming around.

Replaced my XP 64bit as honestly I haved nothing but problems with it. I got vista up and running installed the drivers for my gpu and everything works great. Got the following sreen res options 1680x1050 1440x900 1360x768 1280x1024 1280x960 1280x800 1280x768 1280x720 1152x864 1024x768 960x600 800x600.
Got my 19inch out of storage and it works perfect. Its really nice for surfing the net and working on projects (pluc the 19inch is only about .5cm larger length wise.

Now I am completely happy (much more happy with nvidia) but I kind feel like I should have known this or the information should have been out there. Maybe it is but I haven't been able to find it also sp3 for xp isn't out so why is nvidia being so slack with xp. Or do I not know what I am doing. Maybe it is but I haven't been able to find it. I would really like to know if anyone else has had similar problems with other video cards and drivers. Especially directx10 cards. does anyone else have these problems with xp? Just really curious.

The monitor driver is one thing I thought of. My 19inch is some no name didn't ever expect to find a driver for it but samsung doesn't have a driver for the 2220wm or at least I couldn't find one. But it still doesn't explain why i couldn't use the extended desktop feature in xp.