Windows XP SP3/VistaSP1 for 8600M GT for Gaming!

basically tonite I'm buying a C2D 2.2ghz 4gb ram 8600M GT lappy will be putting my 320gb sata into it (5400rpm but yeah) so I'm wondering should I go for xp sp3 (I believe you can use 4gb in this now right?) and get a far better fps in games or sacrafice this and go for vista sp1 64bit and loose some fps?
purely gaming comes first so what kind of fps would we be talking about loosing for say crysis which is intensive useage to use as a good scale for where it counts...

as for the card youtube it.it'll run crysis on medium settings on 1024x768 which is more than adequate for laptop gaming... i merely chose crysis as an example because it is graphics card hungry so making the right operating choice would benefit here.
obviously I wouldn't run it in DX10...

and COD4/Quake4/CSS/Test Drive Unlim/BioShock all seem to run nice at medium settings in either 1280x800 or 1440x900 so i'd hardly call it not a good card for gaming its not like its that pathetic 8400gs 128mb ram or a x3100gma card...considering i didn't say serious gaming.it's a laptop after all... you can't exactly have time to game anywhere seriously if your needing to take it back and forth hence why this will be fine for me... when i have proper seat time i'll use the elite/ps3...

so if anyone wants to actually answer my thread without flaming complete rubbish at me and base it on facts/benchmarks for what I'm asking with either links or related hardware experience that'd be NICE

as all I'm asking really is for example anyone got similar lappy hardware and tried both xp sp3 and vista sp1 for any of the above games and what were their experiences and what os came out better fps wise....

cheers

 

This would be all I would worry about personally: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

 

Cheers for that link. I read the bit tech page about the 8x00 mobiles being bad, but that page sort of confirms it. And the worrying amount of mentions of HP is unnerving, I assume you can guess why. I am going to get HP to take my lappy back, and get a dell studio in a few months.

Now to reply to the original post. Most people don't report much difference between XP and vista with new hardware, your system really should run vista well enough so that any fps drop will be unnoticeable. Also it seems that nvidia and ati are making more of an effort to optimise drivers for vista rather than XP.

I have the 8400M GS 256mb, and crysis was basically a slideshow, but with a nice core2duo and the 8600 it should be playable.

I play half life 2 and its siblings on it.
Stalker
Sins of a solar empire (this seems to have replaced sleep now)
age 3
supreme commander
CSS
Half life 2 deathmatch <--- seems with these two that the lower card and crummy turion can handle these games and play online well. so yours should fly.

This is all on vista home premium sp1. As for 4gb of ram, a 32bit OS can address 4gb of ram total, so with 256mb taken by your graphics, you would be able to address and therefore use 3.75gb of you system memory. Vista Home Premium 64 might be worthwhile if its an option, then you will get the full 4gb of ram, and your cpu will be able to do what it was made for.

 

I had an 8700M GT in my last laptop before it died and it wasn't fast enough for me.
I was playing games at native res of 1680x1050 though but it still struggled to use high detail at that res in a lot of games.
Most disappointing when the 8800M GTX came out about 2 weeks after I bought my laptop.

 

as for res... its 1680x1050 but... i was going to run it at 1024x(whatever it is in widescreen lol) as I've never had a problem with gaming at a non native res... for example my old 1280x800 dell x1300 ati mobility i used to play stalker and things like that in 800xwidescreen res's and it was fine etc etc... so probably in a 1024 or whatever... as i say though i'm not wanting nor expecting high graphics so yeah i reckon should get around 50 in 1024 on medium... someone on youtube who has exact setup has 25-30fps with full AA on 1024 and medium-high settings so sounds promising.might even be 1440x900 but not sure.
as for 8400gs yeah i've heard thats a painful card isn't it like 400/400mhz my old 9600xt used to be 550/400 i think when stock and abit more oc'ed:\
cheers for your input

 

Yeah its 400/400. Btw stalker runs on it at 1280x800 on mainly low/medium settings.

Though I am going to get rid of the laptop, make HP take it back, its overheating, got over 100 degrees on both cores and the graphics and is locking up, and literally burnt my leg. I know its probably going to break if it keeps getting that hot then cooling down then that hot etc etc with the 8400 it is just going to die. Dell studio for me .

I know that on my desktop screen which is 20inch 1680x1050 lower resolutions look rubbish but then that's due to the size of the screen, on a 15inch(? or 17, doesn't exactly matter) the lower res should look pretty normal. You said you where getting a dell in your wanted macbook post, XPS I imagine, any reason you aren't going for a studio, I know the graphics aren't quite a good, but the 17inch one you can get the 3650 which should be pretty good, they look nice too.

 

i want portability and im getting a vostro.got it well cheap from mcs or whatever its called.studio's are rip offs your paying for these gay fancy glossy paint jobs and overpriced current hardware all because its in a stupid paint job... i'd prefer to have the sleek black vostro with its subtle silver touches and buttons that light up blue when you touch them than an in your face steal me laptop like a studio... lol thinking about it mine probably looks more stealable as it doesn't look like a posh toy haha. oh and im never touching ati again...
had a 3870pcs tht was well nioce but linux drivers suck badly and i want the flexability should i decide to dual boot with ubuntu again...