Odd. I've had a completely different experience with Vista beta 2 to you guys. I have the nVidia v88 drivers and an Athlon64 (single core) running Vista 32bit. Dreamora is right - Aero is not good at all on a single core system.
But wrt to Max apps, I have UAP disabled so I can compile my programs anywhere, so that's not a problem. Any Max app automatically switches Aero off, so that's not a problem. OpenGL appears to be only slightly slower than in XP, so that's not a problem. DirectX is maybe around 10x slower than in XP, as if it's being emulated. For me, OGL is the ONLY option on Vista!
But wrt to Max apps, I have UAP disabled so I can compile my programs anywhere, so that's not a problem. Any Max app automatically switches Aero off, so that's not a problem. OpenGL appears to be only slightly slower than in XP, so that's not a problem. DirectX is maybe around 10x slower than in XP, as if it's being emulated. For me, OGL is the ONLY option on Vista!