Good enough I suppose, but I'm going to be getting a $200 even HD3870 512mb here soon myself, it should be just fine for my gaming at 1280x1024 with no AA (bothers my eyes).

*longtime AMD fan, former 3dfx/Matrox and now ATI fan*

Good man. HD3870 is the best choice in that price range.

I dunno, it sounds like wishful thinking to me. I've never been a fan of dual-GPU solutions anyway; it's far too much money to spend when a superior single-card solution is usually just around the corner for less.

It's more of a personal preference too, depending on the build, I use either nvidia or ATI for machines I build for people, but for my own PC nvidia has never satisfied me.

 No it won't choke on high settings in XP, I used to have the GTS 320MB and it was handling high with a pretty solid 30-40FPS which was very playable...motion blur helps to make that range look very smooth.

In any case I still play crysis, and for a game where most of the entertainment value is in single player that is pretty impressive.  It is just a lot of fun to load up the editor and drop yourself in with a TAC gun and go crazy.  The reason I say most of the entertainment is in single player is because while the multiplayer is interesting it just isn't close to TF2 for me...but if you don't have TF2 you would probably get a lot of use out of it.

The Single player campaign was a bit of a let down at the end but the game itself was still very good imo.  I actually wrote up a review of it here.