Are you sure, I have seen various requirements for FC3 and its all Vista minimum.
From what I've seen is says either Win XP or Win XP/Vista coupled together, also most say XP 32 when it gets down to specifics for the Minimum Requirements.
BUT, after deeper searching for the truth... it's more complicated than what it sounds like on the surface.
FC3 is made with AMD/ATI cards as their support and you Do Need the Latest AMD drivers for the game to work with Win XP... sometimes. Many people on XP SP3 have no problems, but many do have problems and it could be because they have Nvidia cards which may take a little while to get patched up... or it could be a number of different problems. Such as XP supports DX9 but not DX10... but FC3 says minimum requirements Demands a DX9 Graphics Card with Shader Model 4.0 support, but Shader Model 4.0 is only supported by DX10. Now you're seeing where the problem may be coming from.
I have to say... it's a complicated mess with a company gives vague "Official System Requirements" without being more specific.
Here is the OFFICIAL statement:
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MINIMUM SPECS
Processor: 2.66 GHz Intel® Core™2 Duo E6700 or 3.00 GHz AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 6000+ or better
RAM: 4 GB
Video Card: 512 MB DirectX 9.0-compliant card with Shader Model 4.0 or higher (see supported list)
RECOMMENDED SPECS
Processor: Intel Core i3-530 or AMD Phenom II X2 565 or better
RAM: 6 GB
Video Card: 1024 MB DirectX 11-compliant card with Shader Model 4.0 or higher (see supported list)
HI-PERFORMANCE SPECS
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K or AMD FX-4150 or better
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: 1024 MB DirectX 11-compliant card with Shader Model 4.0 or higher (see supported list)
SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS
ATI Radeon HD 2900 / 3000 / 4000 / 5000 / 6000 / 7000 series
Nvidia GeForce GTX 8800 / GTX 9000 / GT 200 / GT 400 / GT 500 / GT 600 series
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Notice not a single mention of OS, however Game-Debate, Gameinfocenter, Systemrequirementslab, as well as Steam, Gamestop, Amazon and other retailers shows Min Reqs as XP.
MY BEST ADVICE to Whiteseeker1 and Anyone Else on XP... Go Buy Windows 7. I know that sounds harsh and I'm not trying to be an a-hole, but FC3 (as well as other games) has just set a new benchmark in Gaming Requirements and XP is fading out quickly. It's a pity, I loved my XP (upgrading to 7 just over a year ago). In my 9 years of using XP-Pro 32bit I had a total of 3 BSOD's and 2 were directly my fault... it never gave me problems and I had dreams of running through fields of wheat holding its hand and dancing. But it's becoming as obsolete as Win98 became 5 years ago when Vista was released.
Other than buying Win7, you can throw $50/USD at Ubisoft and just hope for the best... Sorry