well, im sorry but i have better things to do then make up stupid myths about
games on a Mac forum...
i have a MBP 2.4 2gigs ram, XP and im playing Crysis on Medium at 1440x900
its more then playable.
you can download the free demo and see for yourself or you can check out
youtube.
heres one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dcXCdrnbbI
This is not high settings. It is not even medium settings. it is low settings.
I don't care how many times you see "high" in that video, shaders is set to low, and that's the one that matters.
1024x768 in this movie clip only has 60% of the pixels as the 1440x900 that you are claiming.
But more importantly, I'm going to prove to you, with something you can test yourself, that probably half of the graphics settings are completely redundant if the Shaders setting is set to low.
Step 1) Try Medium Shaders, and Medium Volumetrics. The torches at the very beginning of the game look like penlights, as they should.
Step 2) Try Low Shaders, and Low Volumetrics. The torches look like fugly floodlamps. Not as they should.
Step 3) Turn Volumetrics to Medium, or even High, leaving Shaders on low. The torches remain exactly the same.
This is the same for motion and distance blur, ie. if Shaders is set to low, all of the eye candy is turned off. This however is not the case for other things, like physics and water.
So, if you are playing at 1440x900 with everything set to medium except shadows and shaders, and getting good frame rates, I believe you, sure. I do not believe you are able to turn these to medium at native res and get a framerate higher than 5-10. That would require the 8800M. Even the 8700M would probably only give you 10-15.