Its because the Cryengine 3 behind it is truly a masterful piece of work.

The game runs maxed out with very minimal hardware requirements. On the PC it pretty much doubled the frame rate over Crysis 1 on same hardware while looking the same (or better). 

I can max out the game and it runs at over 40 frames per second at all times with a single GTX470. IT runs butter smooth on 3 monitors and with 2 overclocked GTX470s in SLI at 5760x1080 resolution. For comparison sake, I cant even max out Need for Speed Shift 1 on 3 monitors at that resolution and have to disable AA or lower resolution or detail level to make it playable.

So even if this is the best looking console game, it really isnt because they are finding some newly found processing power in the 360 or because they are optimizing PS3s untapped potential or some other BS. It is because the guys at Crytek made a killer engine that produces amazing results with minimal hardware requirements on all platforms.

All the arguing over this should stop as its meaningless and doesnt prove one console is more powerful than the other. They could probably port this game to the Wii and it wouldnt look half bad...

so you ran it on the same hardware that was around when crysis 1 came out or are you just making an estimate.

Regardless of whether you're talking the Playstation, PS2, or PS3 one of the core reasons why late generation games often look substantially better than mid generation games is that developers find 'tricks' to create effects that are (somewhat) similar to more advanced effects; and artists (after several years of working on similar projects) have become far more efficient with their models, animations, and textures.

I don't know for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if Crytech spent a lot of effort looking for these tricks in (pretty much) every effect they used in Crysis and implemented them in Crysis 2; and the end result is that you get similar looking graphics off of substantially lower end hardware.

The game doesn't run as smooth as you think on the consoles. It has framerate problems on both PS3 and 360.

Nevertheless the game looks good, so its a good job done by crytek, especially on the PS3 since its crytek's first game on it. Its a better middleware then unreal engine 3 for the PS3 for sure.

I have both games installed right now and did some benchmarks...

I am getting 20-30 frames per second on Crysis 1 enthusiast, everything maxed out with a single GTX470 (1920x1080), and 40-50 on Crysis 2 on hardcore.

Crysis 1 has a shitload more options to play with but I am only looking at maxed out values for both games.

Haha coincidentally I'm playing Crysis 2 in the same resolution and video card. I'm getting framerates a little higher (some 55-60), what are your RAM and processor specs?

This can be true but isnt always the case. Metro 2033 for example runs farly well on 360 and looks good. On the PC it looks a lot better but its an absolute resource hog. The game is even worse than Crysis 1 when it comes to requirements.

Crytek made an engine and a game in Crysis 2 that will look great on a PC even if you have something like a HD4870 and GTX260. Gamer setting (lowest setting for some reason) still looks sensational and I am pretty sure sub 100 dollar video cards can get good frame rates with it.

Ive played console ports on PC which dont run this smooth (Transformers, Singularity) and look much worse. My thinking is that all the magic is done by Cryengine 3 here no matter which platform you put it on...

6 gigs of 800 DDR2, Phenom II Quad 940 overclocked to 3.6 ghz. Ive seen frame rates in the high 50s but 40 is the lowest it goes.
When I turn on my second gtx470 in SLI, its a slaughter fest. Im just not used to Crysis game puting up so little resistance when it comes to hardware. Makes me wish I had eyefinity 6 setup and 2 6970s lol

sounds like they took the high requirement criticism from crysis 1  on board ,do you think developing engine(s) tailored for consoles helped in them making the engine optimization better for PC , still i would love to see it run on a 3 year old PC.

I am using the PC version to show what kind of benchmarks and requirements are to be expected from crysis 2, which should apply across all platforms. You really can't do that on console versions of video games.