Even as Microsoft tries to shove Windows Vista down the collective and unwilling throat of computer users worldwide, the company is still perfecting the well-aged and well-loved Windows XP. The latter of the two operating systems just received its third (and evidently last) service pack.

The collection of fixes and improvements includes the vast majority of security and performance updates, patches, and other stuff released in the two plus years SP2 was released. It also includes a few new improvements. There’s little in SP3 that the user will actually see; pretty much everything the service pack packs is background stuff.

Of course, with the release of a new service pack comes a huge, pressing question: How does it compare to Windows Vista and its own recent update, Service Pack 1, in the game performance department? Vista, of course, has been plagued by criticism that games run on it don’t perform as well as they do in Windows XP, even though most of the problems were due to early graphics drivers and have gradually been worked out.

Come with us as we install XP SP3 and take it for a test drive, and more importantly compare it to Vista SP1 with a batch of performance tests. Though DirectX 10 is Vista-only, many a gamer has sworn not to upgrade; will XP SP3 cement their decision, or has Vista and its drivers matured enough to change a few minds? Continued…