Upgrade OS or not?

[chappyd1]

I'm about to do an upgrade to my comp, and I'm wondering about going to Vista. I'm also wondering about 64 vs 32 bit systems. Nice thing about XP is all my programs work, but Ram is limited.

My system now-
Intel E6850 dual core
EVGA 680i motherboard
2 BFG 8800 GTX SLI'd
4 GB of ram (only 2.5 showing)
WD 7200 rpm sata drives.

System runs pretty good, but I fubared an MS FSX simulator install, and can't fix it. I accidentally reformatted the drive (D) it was on. All my games are normally on my E drive, forgetting for some reason I put it on the D drive. So I can't reinstall it, I can't remove or repair it since it really isn't there. But there are enough remnants scattered about the comp to keep it from seeing the disk as a new install. I tried to clean up all the bits and peices of the program, but I'm tired of dealing with. Now my system restore won't work anymore either. Apparently I have just enough knowledge to really screw things up

So the reformat is a go

Stuff I want to upgrade to

I want to see 4gb of ram
BFG GTX280, one for now
WD 10K rpm drives
Intel Quad core 9550

Opinions please

Thanks,

Chappyd

[OS-Wiz]

I'm Vista Ultimate 64-bit -- no problems with drivers, running older printer, etc. But why pay the price if you're on a budget; WinXP Pro 32-bit is just fine. I believe the reason you only see 2.5GB of ram is that the OS is partially mirroring the vidcards in memory (not real sure with that mobo <scratches head>).

[McRontaya]

If you want a good OS, and aren't dependent on Windows proprietary games/software, go to Ubuntu or any other Linux distro. Or dual boot if you just can't part with some Windows apps/games. Wine will help in Linux, but it's not quite the same.