I'm getting Vista Ultimate, was using RC 2 till my pc died and am in the process of building another one, and i'm at odds to decide which version of Vista to get, x64 or 32-bit.
 
Any ideas?

Go with 32-bit, for the much better driver support. That and few home users need more than 4GB of memory.

 
I couldn't agree more.
I don't see any need for 64-bit yet.
Or any time soon.

Even though I have the 64bit version, I'd suggest going 32bit. OEM was the same price, so I thought I'd get this. I've got bog standarad hardware, so drivers are good and performance is good too.
 
Drivers have had issues, especially graphics (mostly fixed) and sound (I got crappy performance until I got the nforce HD driver (not needed under XP)).
 
Games don't run any quiker either, until 64bit games are out, which won't be soon I don't think, not enough market for them.....

but in the summer they supposed to be making more games 64bit and using quad-core .
 
 
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The list of 64-bit games  E-mail
Written by Pánisz Péter    
vasárnap, 14 május 2006
 
Start64!Players have great expectations concerning 64-bit games. Following the release of the 64-bit version of Windows XP, some 64-bit games were produced. Since then, however, there is silence. Or is there?
 
64-bit information technology has a promising future on the game market, too. It seems quite probable that the release of Vista will result in an increased tempo in this field, too, as the 64-bit version will appear simultaneously with the 32-bit one.
 
Start64!The computer game market is an important field, in itself as well as in its effects. At present, and probably for one or two years to come, it is difficult to convince a company manager to replace the existing information technologies with a 64-bit system. On the other hand, his son will probably succeed much more easily in replacing his home computer. All that is needed for this is that software producers make improvements in this field as well. At first sight, this does not seem to be a difficult task: the 64-bit source code must be run on the 64-bit software development kit, and the 64-bit game is available right away, provided that the given development kit has a 64-bit version, too.  Needless to say, this is not at all that easy. Even if all requirements are met and the “development” of 64-bit games can indeed be achieved in this way, it is still not certain that it will be done. Consider the fact that the 64-bit game is in this case a new, different software which lives an independent life once released, it needs independent product support. According to the rationalistic approach, therefore, this solution may not pay off, given the present position of 64-bit systems. Business interest is above the several other considerations, and at present it may be worth exploiting the 32-bit market as fully as possible. Another important factor to consider is the position of 64-bit driver programs and other accessory software. From a certain perspective, the situation is very favourable in this field; from a slightly different perspective, however, it is just the opposite.
Start64!
 
Following this brief introduction, please see the current list of genuine (native) 64-bit games running under 64-bit Windows XP:  
 
    *
      Half-Life 2
    *
      Lost Coast
    *
      Bet On Soldier: Blood Sport
    *
      Codename: Panzers (Phase one)
    *
      Colin McRae Rally 2005
    *
      Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
    *
      Far Cry
    *
      Fahrenheit
    *
      Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
    *
      Unreal Tournament 2004
    *
      World of Warcraft
    *
      WWII Tank Commander
    *
      S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
    *
      Dreadnought
 
 
read this site
 
 
[code:1:9f468cae36]http://www.start64.com/[/code:1:9f468cae36]

I couldn't agree more with Elite.  In the very short term you will start to see many more large programs that will take advantage of or even require 64-bit memory access.  You certainly don't want to have to reinstall later (unless you really like that kind of effort).  Just go with 64-bit, get it solid, and move on - it is the next environment - get used to it now!  I have no problems right now running any 32-bit software on my Vista 64 install.

I'm of the other opinion.  Most of the 64 bit apps that have been developed so far have not shown any significant increase in performance (other than from a security perspective and allowing more than 4Gig memory).  For gaming, so far 64 has not shown a reason to use it and there are many games that I can attest to that do not run on 64 (mostly older games that use DX older than 9.0c, for example).  I do agree its the future, but I don't see too many programs that are not only written for it but actually perform better - which is the point after all for gaming.  Microsoft expects more than a year out before you start seeing most apps having a 64 bit version released at the same time as 32 bit.  For me, maybe in a year software app man. will have worked with it long enough to allow the expected performance increase but that is too long away to wait considering the other issues involved.

Well, there you go... you have 3 that believe there will never be any need to support more than 3.25G in your system and two that believe that before the next roll of Windows there will be apps that require huge amounts of memory.  It really depends on what you will be doing over the next 4-5 years, 5 yrs ago (when XP hit the market) the norm was 128M...  
 
Personally, I'm going heavy into multimedia and also plan to have several office-style programs running at the same time (gotta pay the bills).    Others may only use their systems to play low-rez versions of doom and fear.  I certainly don't plan or want to go through a reinstall just to add more memory and others don't mind reinstalling every year (e.g. my brother will format his hard-drives at the drop of a hat).
 
The choice is yours and good luck with whichever way you go.