Well I'm still making my PC (i made a thread about it weeks ago), and now the guy in the shop tells me that in order to maximize performance on really fancy games, I need to have a more advanced Windows version. He says that, for example, with a game like Crysis, XP doesn't support the highest settings or something.

Now tell me fellas, is this guy full of crap, or do I actually need to get Vista or 7 to maximize my graphics rig?

xp doesnt support direct x 10. that is all

and does that matter? and what version should i actually get?

(btw i'm a complete nutter when it comes to this stuff)

well if you're going to build a really nice system, you might as well have it able to do direct x 10.  It's really not the biggest difference in the world, but its nice.

I'm running windows 7 on my laptop right now, I love it.  But it's still in beta, so you can't get it yet.  Getting vista might be silly at this point, because windows 7 is coming out soon.  But if you get XP then you can't use direct x 10.

Sort of a pickle situation.

so.. what should i do? this sucks.

In the long run it really won't matter since all the minor improvements of Vista 64 will be in Windows 7. Just focus on getting a computer with at least a dual core and extra RAM slots.

just torrent xp

Yes it does. Although many people don't know how to turn that into reality.

XP has much smoother mouse for me. I would pick XP for serious online competition because of the accuracy of the mouse.

and how exactly do you do that?