Hmm, thats quite an assumption. I myself have downloaded the
rocket sled demo and run it using just one of my 470s with SLI disabled (USD 359.00), and it ran fine at 2560x1600 with 4xAA. There was a slight bit of lag, but that was mostly due to the high resolution and AA.
If you click on the link, the Nvidia engineer ran the demo using a single 480 and it was able to handle millions of particles.
Show me one CPU demo that can handle that many particles.. Also, the last time we had this discussion, I showed that the majority of gamers are still running dual core based processors.
Quadcore CPUs probably won't become fully mainstream until another year or more from now.
I haven't played BBC2 yet so bear with me, but what exactly do you find so impressive about the physics in the game?
Doing a quick look on youtube, it seems like BBC2 utilizes scripted destruction animations with a small number of rendered objects (in the hundreds or low thousands).
That sort of thing has been in games for years and years.. When Mafia 2 is released, we'll see how the explosions compare..
Now if you want to see what I find impressive, check this out.
Big explosions are yesterday's news. Games with realistic hair and cloth physics on the other hand have never been possible......until now.