General Discussion

I am putting together a new rig, and plan on playing AoC.  I don't consider myself an expert on either OS but have used both, so what would you all suggest I should use with my new system?  I hate the hassle and compatability issues of Vista, but I know its the way of the future and its only a matter of time.  So what would be the best OS in the next year or so for gaming?  Would I be missing out on the full benefit of the GeForce 9800 if I didn't pick up vista?

 Any suggestions highly appreciated

I have played Vista for over a year without a problem. Ive had WoW, SWG, LOTRO all work well on Vista without issue. AoC is being coded with Vista in mind, so it should have no problem either, in fact some of the graphic upgrades require vista, as I recall

Torrential

only thing you need vista for is DX10 graphics. If you want performance, i would recommend XP. If you want eye candy i would say vista

Vista will probably have the lifespan of Windows ME so if you have the cash to lay down for vista and won't mind that it will be gone in another year or 2, then go for it.  At the very least though, if you still have a copy of XP that you can use, stick with that and see how the screenshots look between it and Vista upon release before making a decision to upgrade.

XP for now until Microsoft starts to provide Vista users soloutions for problems.

Unless you use very old programs with no more recent equivalent and/or very old hardware manufacturers do not support anymore, something you shouldnt be doing anyway, you wont have any issue using Vista.

Games running on Vista usually require more RAM, but good PC are shipped with ~2GB RAM now, so it's not an issue.

That said... Do you want to have benefit of DirectX10 or do you prefer being stuck with DirectX9c forever ?...

IMO, choose Vista. I'm using it for gaming (although i'm no longer a big PC gamer, i'm more a console gamer now) and i'm also using it as a workstation and a server (waiting on server2008 release).

It works wonderful.

Choose vista, this will make one IE6 less roaming on the internet.

DX10 still is not worth it.

Your games will run faster on XP.

So, why is this a question? XP, of course.

Vista ONLY in the case of Vista 64-Bit.  Otherwise you're wasting energy and time.

I'm a happy Vista64 user for over a year now.  But I laugh at people using the 32 Bit version of it, because that's where I believe the bottleneck lies... in outdated 32b files, wasted 64b capable processing, and RAM limitations.

All in all, it's your comfort.  I've never once not been able to get a program to run in Vista with a little tinkering... but that's just me.

So I say Vista 64 Bit... Home Premium is quite nice for that, as is Business or Ultimate.

Well although I like XP to a point, there is part of me that doesn't like it now.  The reason being is because I have started useing vista since release and I must say going back to xp even for work really bothers me.  I play alot of games and I have semi good hardware at home.  As for compatibitly issues, well I haven't seen alot maybe 3 in the last year when it comes to games.  I run Vista Ultimate x64, and I love it, I have tried x32 but 64 seemed more stable to me...LOL.  My suggestion is if your upgrading your machine go no less then the following...

Processor - Quad core entry level

Memory - Minimum 4 GB for vista

HDD - 100GB SATA drive

Video Card - Nvidia 8800GT 512MB is what I run for now

If you keep your machine at those stats or better you will be rocken for at least 1-2 years with no upgrades, well maybe a new video card.  Overall I say don't be afraid of vista it really isn't that bad, look up a few things like, "How to make the screen quit darkening in vista", then vista becomes a great thing.

Vista only because of the improved security direct X 10 is garbage anyway. The differences between direct x 9 and 10 are minor, the one big one is that d9 doesn't kill your frame rate while d10 does.  But if your using a 9800 then that might not be a problem.

XP 64 bit - Best of both worlds.

I'm running a dual core with 4g of ram and an 8800 with 768m ram and raid 0 350g sata drives.  It's so fast it's almost experimental.  >D

Watch out though with XP 64 bit.  The driver support is pretty harsh.