Crysis is a bear of a game when it comes to hardware.
I was able to run it with full graphics @ 1680 x 1050 on my AMD 6000+ 4Gb and ATI 4870HD, but there were areas it would stutter...
Valid points made about the meaning of this bench mark, and if truth be known to us guys the proof of the pudding is what our systems will do with the good old gold standard, and I'm surprised it has not been mentioned before, of using IL2 and Fraps (or the in game counter) to determine the min/max/average frame rates.
Mine with maxed settings:
Avge 41
Max 83
Min 14
I haven't optimized my GPU largely because the ATI CCC failed to install (8.12 CCC has known issues with XP64 ) and I haven't got around to installing RivaTuner.
I do ponder the value of a faster hard drive, yes applications/windows/games will load faster, but I would not expect that to have an impact on frame rates, unless the system needs to page virtual memory - but then more RAM would be a better buy in that case .