The graphics cards are getting better by the day and the market is getting heating up. Flashback 2007, when 8800 GTXs and 8800 Ultras were ruling the graphics card market, eating all the games for breakfast. These cards seemed to get through every benchmark thrown at them even without SLi.................Then came Crysis, the game with great graphics but sadly, no card was able to run it in its full glory. Nvidia tried to borrow some time to get their 9 series ready by introducing 3 way SLi. The game couldn't even run decently on these so called "High End" 3 Way SLi rigs. When the 9 series was out with 9800GX2, which was 2 8800GTs on one card, Crysis remained a tough nut to crack. Even two of these were too less to handle crysis. Meanwhile, ATi had released their top end card HD 3870 x2, which was had two HD3870s as a single card. But, the 
attempt was in vain. Crysis was just too good for this junk (Crysis made them junk!). But now the time has come when Crysis is to be run with all the eye candy turned up and resolutions cranked up to 2560 x 1600. Nvidia's new card, GeForce GTX 280 is the new monster. This card is a beast with 1.4 billion transistors. It is based on the same old 65nm fabrication process. It also supports Nvidia PhysX which will make the physics calculations to a new level. We have to wait for the new drivers to see it in action though. It has 240 shader units and CUDA parallel processing which will reduce the load on the processor in regular tasks other than gaming.
Performance
Call of Duty 4
This card doesn't perform really well if you compare it to 9800 GX2 in quad SLi. But still it shows that it's undoubtedly the best single core card money can buy.
Crysis
Finally, a card that can run crysis in its full glory, that's what you may be thinking but hey, think again. If you believe that a single GTX 280 can run this game at highest settings, think again. It takes three of these cards to achieve that. But that's the only way you can play this game at maximum settings at 2560x1600.
As you see, 3 of these cards run crysis ad 38 FPS at the maximum possible settings at 2560x1600 resolution in the most graphically intense area of the game. Hmmmm......not bad!
Verdict
The verdict doesn't need to be long. The benchmarks show everything. Three of these cards will make the best rig money can buy but at a very steep price of about $640. So, three of them will cost you about $1900. Buy these if you have robbed a bank recently else it may bankrupt you!