Vista 32bit or Vista 64bit

im building a pc...i would like to be able to play previous games i missed out on and also present and future...i see some ppl talking about their fav old games not working with 64bit OS this true? can it be fixed? was it fixed in vista SP1

Umm its a hard question. after sp1 came out for vista I upgraded. But I had xp 64bit and had some real issues. I went with vista 32 bit.
I resently picked up a low end gaming laptop that had vista 64bit gateway. So i have both.
Far Cry the original won't install on 64 bit I can't figure it out. Haven't had to many other issues except my iphone wont work (it will charge though). Not a big deal for me but I wish it did. Thats all the vista 64 bit problems I've really had. If your still really worried about it playing old games I wouldn't go 64 bit but it depends on how old they are and I hate to say but I would go for it. I feel like 4gigs of ram is almost standard you need 64 bit. Especially with the video memory expansions. Running 4 gb of memory and 1gb video card your going to start feeling performance hits by not using a 64 bit os. (btw sorry kinda going on a rant about a review that had 4 gb ram and 2 4870x2 4 gb video memory and ran a 32bit os just stupid)

Anyway depends on what you are building and how much upgrading you are planning to do before you upgrade your os.

I can play every new and old game I have on Vista 64.
However, most games still run a little faster on XP 32. (Even with the 3 gig limitation).
So, it may be until after Windows-7 that 64bit software finally shows improvements over XP.
Windows 7 will also better use quad-core CPUs.
Like others said, you should have 4+ gigs when using a 64bit OS. Not sure about the 1 gig video card in 64bit - but makes sense.

I got Vista 64 Ultimate to try to get an easy upgrade to Windows-7 64bit. Don't know yet if that was smart or stupid.

However, for things like RAID5, XP requires loading specific drivers, etc. Vista 64 just saw it and automatically loaded it.

Vista x64 is fine. I upgraded it from 32bit XP and I wouldn't go back. My PC is also pretty fast if that matters.

Vista 64 has arrived. Support is near total now. Everything runs great for me. A trip to best buy will show you that many, if not most, of the systems there are now sold with Vista 64. That tells you a lot about support at this time and going forward. Vista 64 is now very happily employed by a very large chunk of the enthusiast market, as you can see from the responses and polls here, that also tells you something.

you guys are a great help...im pretty much re-building from the ground up...check it...

E8500 3.16ghz "wolf"
Asus Maximus II P45
OCZ Reaper PC8500 2gbx2gb=4gb
BGF Geforce GTX 260 216 Maxcore OCX
Vista Home Prem
and an antec 900 case
still under a $1000.00
sound okay? thus far?

Just don't go trying to play old skool 16-bit games and you'll be fine for the most part. Also, avoid any games from pre-2006 or so that use Starforce DRM, you will NOT be able to start your computer except in "last known good configuration" mode. Perhaps the protection driver could be updated for those old games but I'd rather avoid that malware altogether.