3d apps : Vista or XP64 bit?

i know of people who've used them on 64bit systems but you'd have to visit each product page to read whether they can actually benefit the extra RAM 64bit allows.

I would say go with XP 64 there will likely be patches already built and XP as a whole has performed better. Vista SP1 is coming out now and it does fix a lot of things. I cant speak to the apps your going to use since I do not run any of them. I personally have had a good experience with Vista for what I use it for. Of course it takes gutting out the bloat and setting things up correctly but so does XP. I know Vex had some issues but you guys also run many programs that I don't.

S