okay, here's what I've found:
the game runs slowly, no matter what res you play at. turning off Specular will boost your framerate a *lot*, but the game will also look like Quake2 with lower-poly geometry. There's no reason for this. Specular does near no framerate hit in most games.
I'm expecting a driver release soon enough that is a workaround for Gearbox's piss-poor conversion skills.
reviews of around 80% must be completely ignoring the single-player game. it's rinse, repeat without the fun of co-op play that made the Xbox version tolerable. the maps take repetition to levels that Pong couldn't reach.
The multiplayer is quite amusing, when it works right. I think this one's gonna find itself being the amusing Lan game that gets pulled out when 1942 and ut2k3 are played out...at least until ut2k4 comes out. I swear that's why Halo came out with it did...because they know that 2k4 with vehicles is gonna be everything Halo is, but smoother and prettier.
At least Halo is more fun multi than Chrome.