I recently purchased Intel's new Q9450 and wow does it scream.  Those of you who own one should overclock it to its potential.  I am currently running it at 3.5ghz with the FSB at 440.  Vcore is at 1.4 and northbridge is at 1.55.  You may have better luck than me nad reach 3.6, so try it out.  If you aren't sure how to go about doing it, then head on over to Anandtech's forums for more help.

I used to have an AMD X2, 2.9 ghz, with DDR memory, and an 8800 GT.  I figured Crysis would play decent since the graphics card is fairly new and it was dual core.  Boy was I wrong.  Couldn't play it on High, and medium would lag at times and just looked crappy at 1280 res.

Now I upgrade to Quad core, DDR2, and a new mobo using the same graphics card and can play it on Very High.  It is remarkable how much of a difference it makes with this CPU.  This game HAS to be played on at least High to really appreciate how great it looks.  Though the game got lame killing flying aliens.