I haven't tried Win 7 yet, how are you finding performance in that generally? I was thinking I'd install it and give it a go when I get my new SSD (whenever Intel decides to continue shipping their Generation 2 units...). I'm a bit reluctant since Vista has been absolutely fabulous for me both performance and stability wise. I read some games just don't work in Win 7 yet.
Overall I do notice it being more responsive at a desktop level. As for gaming wise performance it's pretty much on par with Vista, I do notice some performance improvements in games like Farcry 2 where my minimal framerate shot up about 15fps which I thought was strange but very awesome. Having a minimal framerate of 58FPS is pretty kick ass! I've yet to try Anno.. on my todo list.
All my games run better on win7 then on vista x64. I never had any uber issues with vista either, some annoying things, nothing out of the ordinadry. But my fps in all games gained from win7, I use win7 on a pure gaming basis - it simply runs everything much much better. And I would guess the thread optimizations they claim to have done with win7 is what makes the diffrence. Games like WiC gained 5-6 fps over vista, farcry2 gained 10-12 fps. Havn't tried crysis or fallout3 on win7 so can't comment on those. Imo no reason to clinge to vista its crap compared to win7 =) DL the 7600 RTM with crack and you will never look back.