Windows Vista

second (or fifth?) for newegg

I run UT on Vista - runs just fine with a somewhat high-end PC.

Still, to echo the Vista sentiment, I will be upgrading to Windows 7 as soon as possible.

You can build a pretty good machine on a budget. Here is a starting point:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/dream_machine

Usually, this machine is top of the top every year, but someone decided to do a recession dream machine, and it had mixed reader responses. But this will give you a clue of what you can do. If your budget is greater than this, then you can start picking other mobo/CPU combos If so, just ask, I or anyone else will have input on just about anything you can think of. ( I suggest a Core i7 gen rig if in budget).

As for vista, consensus holds on waiting for Win7 (or as the staff at school calls it, Vista 1.5) Several of them run it and like it just fine.

Wow, it's nice to know that my pc (point zero) in still in good shape........

I ran UT2004 and UT3 on XP for a while. Then I did a full install of Vista (thinking that UT3 is a DX10 game.) I noticed a big performance hit on both UT games switching to Vista.

I still can't quite figure it out, but both games feel sort of laggy even with all the settings at their lowest.
I suspect that the problem is most likely the ATI video driver (experience with the linux version puts little faith on their driver development), or some network setting.

I guess I should try single player mode to see if it is a network issue.