Can't believe nobody has said this!

Get a Creative X-FI sound card man, it totally kills onboard sound. As long as you have some decent speakers it's well worth the upgrade. I've got the same exact specs as you, and I'm also wondering what I should upgrade. I'll probably just keep it for as long as I can and when I have enough saved I'll just sell it and build a new PC with the new next gen hardware.

I cannot believe people are still making topics like this.Deihmos

It's because I havn't heard much discussion about Vista vs XP in over a year. I was just wanting to know if things stand different now.

^^ your aguement is solid... no wait, it's just some random rant with no basis in reality. :roll:CellAnimation

Exactly. The last time I used Vista, I definitely fell in love with it's sheer about of features. When I switched back to XP it just felt stripped and bland compared to Vista. So if Vista SP1 and XP SP3 perform virtually the same with decent hardware, I'll happily make that switch back to Vista.

I've heard people say they get better frame rates in XP. I've got no issues with frame rates in Vista. I'd take it over XP any day of the week. If you've only got 2GB of RAM Vista 64 bit is kind of pointless. If you upgrade to 4GB like you mention you may as well go with Vista 64 bit. 4GB of RAM on either 32 bit or 64 bit is going to feel better than 2GB. My personal experience with Vista is that on decent hardware (and I'd consider your hardware decent) it runs just as well as XP. I've had no issues with stability. It runs great on the 3 computers I run it on here. Also 1 thing to conisder is your specs say you are running XP Home, that's enough reason to upgrade to XP Pro or Vista right there.CellAnimation

Thanks man this helps a lot. What I'll do is buy 2 more gigs of RAM and reinstall Vista 64 bit SP1 and hope for the best.

EDIT: Forgot to mention; I won't switch over to Vista unless it allows my X-Fi extremegamer sound card to record from WAVE. That was the #1 thing that Vista pissed me off. I couldn't record anything playing through my computers speakers and couldn't get my voice to play through my speakers neither. Hopefully this new soundcard I have will enable that support, unlike my old Audigy SE.

Right now my XP install has been giving me nothing but trouble for who knows why. And I was thinking about reinstalling Vista on my machine. My questions are;

Is Vista's gaming performance still subpar to XP?

Am I better of using 32bit or 64bit?

Will 2GB of ram suffice, and will 4GB of ram even make a difference when gaming?

I'm only seeking simple answers, I don't want to hear all this mumbo jumbo about things that I never asked to hear.

If Vista performs the same or better than XP I will make the switch back to Vista. If not I'll stick with XP.