You have probably seen all the negative Vista threads,as well as the good ones,so I won't bother in saying anything about them ,but just give you my REAL experience with my Vista x64 OS.
Install was fast around 20 mins,when it was finished I only had 2 drivers missing which was DTV tuner and my ColorVision Spyder2 Express USB calibration tool,bear in mind this was last January(However I have them now since both companies have released drivers,only took 5 weeks from Vista's release date).
Vista itself I find rock stable,memory handling/security is superior to XP,its very fast in general use(I'm using 4GB of ram and 4GB ReadyBoost drive).
Gaming wise I have tried and installed 25 games and they all work great,old software that I used in XP ie... programs like CCleaner,Thunderbird,Spybot,Spywareblaster,Nero all work great so I'm very happy with Vista,still waiting for my first BSOD .
Not had any issues with Nvidia drivers,they work in gaming which is the main thing.
As to Creative Labs drivers(I'm using an Audigy 4),they are basic but work fine ,good in a way since not bloated,you can adjust speakers,bass,treble etc....make sure you select 24 bit for sound in Control Panel,Vista defaults sound setting to 16 bit,so if your sound card supports 24 bit which it does, 24 bit sounds better.
Your hardware is more then good enough for Vista,I say go for it.
🙂