I personally find that frame rate on the 64MB ddr radeon unacceptable. I didnt buy that card (and im sure this goes for the geforce 2 owners also) to NOT be able to play newer games in the near future... I think mostly this is just an example of an engine that has not been optimized for any but the high end video cards yet. Lets face, not many people own a geforce 3 or radeon 8500 yet, and some are even backin the TNT2 generation (definatley time to upgrade there) but If the average dell user that bought their computer a year ago cant play unreal 2 without an upgrade.. guess what
unreal 2 wont sell.... developers are very concious of that fact that they need their games to run on the previous generation of hardware, in order to get any kind of dcent market saturation. The market for PC games is already small enough, and I dont thik pandering to only the hardcore FPS freaks, and the financially elite is going to provide a large enough profit to keep a game profitable. Epic is not a stupid developing house, and I guarantee that when Unreal 2 releases, no one will have a problem playing on a geforce 2 or Radeon
I also think that sometimes Anand is so high on being at the cutting edge of technology, that the reviews provided have a really hard edge "you are screwed if you dont spend 500$ a month in computer upgrades" edge to them