GI: What are your thoughts on Vista? Do you like it? Do you like its performance?

Rein: It's love/hate. So, I love the feel of Vista, and I love all the cool power tools that are built right in this time. I love the way it organizes all your content for you. I love all the gaming features. I hate the fact that there's a 32-bit version of it, and I hate the fact that there are versions that can run without Aero Glass. I think these were compromises they made for Intel, and I think those are mistakes that'll hold the industry back. There's no reason why every machine out there shouldn't be 64-bit now. There's great 64-bit processors-AMD has been shipping them for years. Intel was shipping them for years- and then, through the core processor, the original core processor into the mix and the Core Duos were 32-bit, and they shouldn't have. And Microsoft shouldn't have capitulated to them and said, "Oh, well Vista will support those." They should have waited until they had the Core 2-another great processor-but full 64 bit. So, I'm a little worried that we'll get limited support of 64 bit from the driver writers, from the application-software guys. Game guys won't be a problem, because one of the conditions of being given the Games for Windows logo is 64-bit support. So games won't have that problem. The question is how many game developers will exploit 64-bit and the advantages of 64-bit. It'll be small, because the majority of systems will be 32-bit. So it's kind of a love/hate thing. I love the OS, it's definitely an improvement. The latest Office is a big improvement. I want 64 bit. I need more than 2 gigs of RAM. I absolutely need more RAM, and RAM is cheap now. I'm really going to hope that 64-bit is not the forgotten stepchild or relegated to workstations or what have you or just certain applications run on them. I think the way to accomplish that would have been not to do 32-bit. I'm disappointed in that.

GI: If you were going to build a rig right now, would you go with a Core 2, Core 2 Extreme and get DX10 right away or would you think someone should just wait and see how Vista pans out?

Rein: I'd go for the absolute top of the line, because that's the kind of guy I am. (laughs)

GI: You have the money to do that, too.

Rein: No, but nonetheless, I would definitely build a Vista system. Windows XP will still be around for a long time, and obviously we're going to be supporting XP in any products we come out with for the next couple of years. I would absolutely go for Vista, no question about that. And I'd definitely go for a graphics card with DX10 support. It would be silly not to. You want to be as future-proof as you can. That doesn't mean you have to buy the most expensive one, you just want to find one that has support for it.

GI: Unreal has always scaled really well, from low-end hardware all the way to the high end. Where do you think the sweet spot is? What do you think it takes for a rig to be able to put Unreal through all of its paces?

Rein: We always aim Unreal for systems that people don't have yet. (laughs) Whether its UT or any Unreal game, so I think the sweet spot has yet to show up. Again, it's 64-bit and a ton of RAM, like an NVIDIA dual 8800s and Core 2 Extreme Quad processor-you could certainly build a super rig, but UT3 with everything turned up all the way is still going to struggle on that kind of thing. A year from now, it'll still be a game that is a showcase game for whatever hardware you happen to be getting then. That's normal. That's exactly the way we've done it every time from the original. The format hasn't changed there. But you're right, we try very hard to make sure it runs well on what the average gamer has. It'll definitely be hard to reach the bottom this time, because with UT2004, we had a software renderer, so it could run on virtually anything. We're hoping to have that capability at some point with this series, but I don't know for sure or when.