32 bits games on 64 bits OS

Vista 64 here: I'm sure there's got to be a few frames per second here and there. But in actual usage, I do not notice any difference with the 32 bit games I have installed on my system. Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2/Mask of the Betrayer, Oblivion, and Bioshock. Having said that, I do have a solid amount of horsepower and up to date components inside the case on my desk.

More to the point I think you're after tho: I do not recommend installing Vista in any flavor on an older system. Drivers, while *hugely* better than they were even a few months ago, can still be somewhat finicky at times. Often for difficult to determine reasons, as well. And I've noticed that many makers aren't even bothering to create drivers for older components. They'd rather force you to buy new. So I'd recommend that if you have XP now, you should stick with it. The benefits aren't all that great since XP also uses multi-core processors. Reportedly not *quite* as efficiently as Vista, tho in practice it's certainly close enough. You're basically gaining a prettier interface and DX-10 for the money and the trouble of upgrading.

Of course, it's a different story for a new build. Yes, there are some issues, mostly related to vendor's drivers and incompatabilities which haven't been worked out quite yet. A little bit moreso if you're discussing V64. But if you look at the two at their respective releases and at similar stages in development, Vista *is* better than XP was.

I wouldn't do XP Pro 64 unless you got it for free somewhere. Someone already made a post saying how horrible it played while gaming.

Try reading up on it in this thread (and/or do a forum search next time before starting a topic)

WinXP x64??? Don't you mean Vista x64? Do not try XP x64 it is a big waste of time, definately go for Vista.

A lot of performance? What makes you say that? Maybe when Vista first came sure but not now!

I run Vista x64 and to be honest i cant really tell the difference in performance anymore between Vista and XP. Sure some things are a bit slower but on the other hand some things are quicker. Vista has matured far quicker than XP did when it first came out

The drivers from NVidia although still not perfect are a huge improvement over what we had a few months ago. Plus with all the hotfixes/patches that Microsoft have been releasing means that Vista is no longer a big slouch anymore.

As i say i run x64, play HL2:Ep2, WoW, Race07, GTR2 and even a few older games like Richard Burns Rally which all run perfectly fine with no problems.

I am having an issue with my old Audigy 2 Zs sound card though in Vista but I have just ordered myself a new X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty 7.1 Champion sound card which should hopefully fix the problem :-)

Don't use the crappy Vista Home: Basic version. Make sure you buy the Premium or Ultimate versions. From what I understand, all the others are crap - loaded with ton's of trialware and other unnecessary software.

How much ram do you have in your PC? I don't see it in your sig. Anyways, if you open Performance Monitor in Vista, you'll see that it uses 700-800 MB of page file just idling. So upgrade RAM (No more than 4 gigs unless you go for the 64 bit OS, because 32 bit won't recognize more than 4 gigs.) There are also tons of performance tweaks that can be performed to optimize vista.

Just some info here:

Vista is configured to automatically defrag either weekly or bi-weekly. Make sure this crap isn't going on while you're benchmarking. Vista also has an extensive indexing service, and from what I understand it will probably run for the first day or two after the installation. So, either turn indexing off or at least make sure it isn't running while you're benchmarking.

Those are just a few things you can tweak in order to improve performance on your Vista machine.

I have winXP64 and I have no problems with it at all....

I bought it for the fact that I can use 4Gb of ram and have it all recognized.

Thanks!