Need help choosing OS for new gaming rig

Ok. So I'm getting a new gaming rig and need help picking out an OS. I need some experts on here to help me decide what OS to go with. Let me know which would be the best and why. Thanks in advance.

SPECS:

NZXT Zero Aluminum Full Tower (It has: 1 x 80mm top fan, 4 x 120mm side fans, 2 x 120mm rear fans, 1 x 120mm front fan)

800 Watt Xion SuperNova Power Supply - SLI certified

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6850 CPU @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache 64-bit

Vigor Gaming Monsoon II Lite CLT-M2LI LGA775 CPU Air Conditioner Cooling System

EVGA nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard (maximum ram supported is 8 GB)

4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory Corsair Value Select.

2 (SLI ooowwwnnzzzzz) EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 16X PCI Express cards

500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (1 HD don't really need more)

Sony Q170A 18x Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive

LiteOn LH-20A1H 20X Double Layer DVD+-RW Super Allwrite + Lightscribe Technology

ON-BOARD 10/100 Network Card

1.44 MB Floppy Drive


The choices are:

Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Basic(32-bit Edition) or 64-bit Edition.

Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium(32-bit Edition) or 64-bit Edition.

Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate(32-bit Edition) or 64-bit Edition.

Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition w/ Service Pack 2.

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional w/ Service Pack 2.

Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition.

To cut it down for you.

It's out of Windows XP Pro or Vista Ultimate 32/64.

if you want full use of the ram, you're gonna have to go with a 64bit OS.

-i'm not 100% sure but your gpu ram is included into the max supported by system.

this is just opinion, but until vista gets a little more mature, I'd stick with the tried and true win xp (I use pro w/sp2). you can always upgrade your OS.

really in the end it's a matter of choice, that is all up to you.

From what I've seen on my Mac 4gb ram and PC 4gb, Vista 32bit won't display right amount of ram. Same goes for 64-bit on PC. I still like it though.

Oh, and SLI doesn't own. It's a big waste.

Last I heard about XP 64-bit, it had serious compatibility and performance issues. That was a while ago though, has it gotten any better?

I'd kind of like to use it myself, if it isn't a pain in the ass and actually has some advantages now that many games have 64-bit support.

I haven't touched a 64bit OS yet. using 2gigs of ram is more than enough for me and most people. I hot-swap with xp/vista, and by far I enjoy xp much more.you're gonna get people that will tell you 4gb of ram is great, but if you aren't using a quad core and graphic rendering/PS proggies, it's a waste. (that is my opinion)...in the future prolly yes, as of now...2 gigs of good memory is all you really need.

-it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

I would stay away from Vista....far far away atleast for now. To save yourself some hastle I would get one of the XP's, im using XP Home OEM for my dedicated gaming PC because it runs and runs and I dont have to worry about it much.

[QUOTE=iridescentfyre]Last I heard about XP 64-bit, it had serious compatibility and performance issues. That was a while ago though, has it gotten any better?

XP Pro 64bit only had compatibility issues with 16bit software. I have never run across a piece of CERTIFIED software that caused a problem. Most people's issues with 64bit can be traced to using un-certified utilities or 16 bit software.
Performance issues? Windows XP Pro 64bit has always out performed it's 32bit brother.
The biggest problem with 64Bit XP is scanner support, everyone is using twonked 32bit TWAIN which is very slow and unstable. It has to be reinitialized every scan.
For a lot more information you can go to www.planetamd64.com and ask questions or browse the forums.

To the OP, I would advise using Windows XP Pro 64Bit. That is the OS of choice by most developers for good reasons. It will allow you to extract the most performance from your processor, RAM and GPUs. Of note: last I knew Nvidia had some issues with SLI performance with 64bit however those issues have been "addressed and resolved." I personally am not so sure about that.
Installing any 32bit OS on your computer would be a waste of money. While it may see the extra two gigs of ram, it would have to be forced to use it.

I did not find any information about your sound card there, a minor oversight I am sure. Please note that creative drivers for the XFi do not work with 4GB of RAM installed. You can find a modified driver at the above mentioned web site.