Windows OS Boot Camp questions

[barryd]

Posted this earlier in the gaming section, but i think i would find more help here. Anyway...

Here are my options:

1. Vista Business 32-Bit
2. XP Pro 64-Bit

Because of student deals, I am able to get either of these OSs for basically nothing. I tried to get Vista Business 64-bit but "that's not covered by this promotion."

So my question is, which of these two OSs would be best for gaming on? I will be buying either the 24" iMac with the high-end Nvidia card or the stock octo Mac Pro with the 8800.

I don't know if this matters, but the XP Pro would be a clean install and the Vista Business I would be upgrading too after a clean install of XP Home.

Please share any suggestions on which of the two machines I should pick as well. I'll use it for mainly for web dev work (Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator, PS) and Office on the Mac side and some coding work, but mainly gaming on the Boot Camp partition. I don't play Crysis and FPS stuff like that. I'm a MMORPG (AoC, EQ2, WoW, LOTRO etc.) guy who would like to run Flight Simulator X as well.
Is one of these machines a clear winner over the other for my needs?

Thanks!

 

[kenned]

For what you're doing, go with the iMac with the 8800 card should be more than enough, none of the games you mention even require that powerful cards.

On the OS side, don't go with Xp 64bit, it's hardly supported with drivers, and you'll probably not need to use more than 3,3Gigs of RAM. Vista is just RAM-heavy eye-candy. I'd go with XP *pick a version* 32 bit

 

[illidian]

64-bit XP and Vista are both poor options at this point.

If you're only going to be gaming, Vista I think would be the better choice.