Upgrade advice - GC vs GC and Windows 7?

Hey all, was after a bit of advice about upgrading my PC.

I recently had to buy a new mobo and CPU due to the old one dieing, which slowed me down on upgrading my graphics card, couldn't afford both, sadly.

Now I have some money and am looking at getting an upgrade, but am undecided which way to go.

I'm looking at getting a Nvidia GTX 560, but I can either get a 560 normal or pay more and get the 560 Ti.

Sounds like a no brainer, I know, but I'm also toying with upgrading my OS to Windows 7. Atm I'm on Vista, which works fine, but is only the 32 bit version, so some of my memory is lost as a result and makes it pointless upgrading it in the future. I know moving to the 64bit will improve this and makes me more future proof.

The question is, should I get a GTX 560 and Win 7 64 bit edition, or should I use the money to get the superior GTX560 Ti and stick with the OS I have and upgrade that later, perhaps when Win 8 comes out?

For the record, current specs are.

Core i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30GHz
4 gig of ram (using the 3.5 Vista lets me use)
500 gid HDD's
Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D3V

Thanks in advance, all

Win 8 absolutely sucks, given the last two previews. (And doesn't sound like they're getting better with the next one, due out shortly.) Go with 7 if you're going to upgrade. >.>

(Download Virtualbox. Download the Win8 preview ISO when the next one comes out - early June, IIRC. Try it yourself.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

Honestly, a regular GTX 560 should be perfectly acceptable for gaming (it's no GTX 680, but hey, what is?).

I'd say economize and go Win7 64-bit with the 560. What you MIGHT want to do is look at EVGA's offerings and find one that's eligible for their "Step Up" program.

This way, if you aren't quite satisfied with the card in the next 90 days, you can upgrade it for the difference between the price you paid for your card and the cost of the new one.

And I agree. AVOID WIN8 LIKE THE PLAGUE THAT IS IS!

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Win 8 looking that bad??

Huh, given how everyone raves about Win 7, I thought they might get it right.

So, does the 64 bit version of Windows make that much difference then? Never had a 64 bit system before

The problem with Win8 is the "desktop" paradigm they've adopted. They're so convinced that the mobile device "one app at a time" touch-style interface is The Next Great Thing, that they've completely castrated the system to best support this interface.

For people using desktop for productivity (or anything beyond basic media consumption), this is an absolute nightmare.

64-bit, if you have more than 3GB of RAM is a better idea. There may be some apps that freak a bit at 64-bit, but most of the major kinks have been worked out in the last 5 years or so.

Outside of a couple of conventions (like Program Files for 64-bit programs and Program Files (x86) for 32-bit), they're almost identical functionality-wise.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

I'm presuming that CoH and all recent games play perfectly fine on 64 bit systems? Would hate to go to all this trouble and then find out it won't work!

I've been running CoH on 3 64-bit systems for a couple of years. The only "problem" is that for some reason 3D sound is disabled, so my 7.1 surround system doesn't give me that "full immersion" feel.

I definitely plan avoiding Win8 on any destop PC - its designed around multitouch screen input and whilst it will work with mouse and keyboard I cannot see it being a pleasant experience.
If the Kinect SDK gets licenced for commercial use (it is available for personal use/ research atm) it might become a reasonable option but until that happens or the price of large touchscreens plummets I'll be keeping well clear.