ok, first off...its not your card..its your VISTA
vista is buggy, with any game that isnt tagged Vista and Games fot Windows.
(that means, unless its bloody shadowrun, the new tomb raider or halo2 ect, its gona have lots of problems)
its still gona be buggy for a while, since...
1 Mr Gates *spits in the general direction of his house* does not realy care about people and users, especialy if they like to play with what he considers OLD stuff. (anything that is generaly not made to cater to his latest OS, in other words)
2....they (at microsoft) also do not realy care, so long as they have goten your cash, its all good...like your service provider, even when you purchace your internet to play games only, if you can connecto to the net, but not to a game thats online only, they dont care, you are getting the net, so who cares?
sure, you can get yourself a better card, but damnit, a 8600 GT isnt that bad a card.
if you had say, a geforce4 Ti, like me, then i could say get a better one, since theres no way in tarterus that an ancient card like that would get vista drivers made
i guess...did you just go to nvidia site and get it(driver) from them, in which case, did you get the vista version or the win2k/xp version?
have you tried running the games in emulation mode (run as say, winxp rather than as winVista)
also.....is the new machine a build, or a store off the shelf build? something like a dell ect?
last resort......*cries* what we have had to do with at least 5 laptops only this year....take Vista off and replace with WinXP
if you still have your own copy of XP, the sticker (dont forget, you can only have it installed on ONE pc, so if your still using the old one, you will have to get a newer one) and hopefully the old machine sitting in your garage, you can take both towers down to your local indy computer builder and get it re-installed there for a fee...or buy a new copy of XP and do the same, or whipe your vista, re-install yourself and then start the Loooong >.< task of trolling the net for the drivers (non vista version)
although, the BEST way, is to whipe, partition the hard drive into two, and have one half vista, one half XP for about 18months or so, in the hope they actually get some decent fixes for non vista made stuff
afaik, as long as you own BOTH versions of the os, you can run them on the same machine, but i WOULD check the readme and licensing agreement for vista FIRST if poss....
(he can be such a slipery little..hm...i bet he is a Slytherin ^^)
*Edit* also, check these stikied pages....
http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=35434(runing the sims2 with Vista *updated*)
http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=52772(nvidia BETA driver is out)
this might help, though the top one is more about have i got the stuff to run, which you HAVE...but there mgith be sometihng further down to help