Don't blame Vista - manufacturers like Realtek had plenty of time to come up with Vista drivers. Look at Creative - their drivers are so bad I recently removed the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS from my system and am now using the (very acceptable) HD audio on my eVGA 780i.
Not that I use it much - PC in bedroom and wife complains about the sound of dying monsters
[edit] - shoot me - nobody even mentioned Vista ><