Bill,

My XP-Home machine is a AMD750mhz. I haven't seen those rumours that XP is a resource hog and I can say that, overall, XP Home is MUCH "snappier" than the old Win98SE that I used to run there. It also boots/shutdowns MUCH faster than Win98SE.

Presently I have a friend staying with me. He is a FlightSim afficionado. He installed it on the system, which has a Matrox G400 dual video adapter (only 32 meg) and 512meg RAM on the machine and he is satisfied that he get 30+ fps.
I don't 'do' games myself, so can offer no other input on the subject.

cheers