8800GT & HD3870 ss weren't taken from the same horizontal plane, and this will cause the IQ difference.
They should have printed the screen ~0.5s later on the 8800GT, and 8800GT ss would/should have ended up looking like the HD3870 ss.
The sand, the shadows & the reflections.

This IQ compare is useless, done by noobs. Not saying there isn't a IQ difference between the cards in Crysis, but this ss compare is hm useless.

Try Crysis Benchmark_GPU yourself and watch carefully what happens the first 5 seconds!