After a good two and a half months of pain I finally got all the drivers and base applications working in my new fancy-shmancy Vista64 installation.
First game to try was SH3 of course; and to my surprise

it actually works! Maybe even runs a little better? ...but that might be more from the new zippy 10k Raid0 array. That load bar just cranks right along now.
I just couldn't bear the thought of reinfecting my system with starforce, so I went ahead and paid another $20 for the D2D version. Money well spent I think; turns out the latest D2D version comes pre-patched with 1.4 too.

Ahhhh... I've finally got my boat back, the 64-bit OS, a new Raid0 setup, I'm all backed up with a bunch of different drives. Life is good.