im guessing its not 100% down to SD since some people with the exact same gfx card can play flawlessly. some nvidia people are struggling too. didnt i read that ATI force AO? that could be an issue

If that is the truth then i would be rather pissed off as i hate AO and DOF. I dont have them in real life so why on here.

I'm running ATI and I'm having no problems with Brink.

i5-750 3.2GHz OC, 8GB 1600 DDR3, ATI HD6970 2GB, Dell 30" 2560x1600 IPS, Windows 7 Pro x64. I get an average of 60-80fps depending on map and current location/frustum content.
It's a clean no-cr*p system though.

Other than that... usually games look great on this 30" IPS monitor
Doom 3 which is old idtech still looks amazing, and I played ET:QW to death and it looks great.
But this game just looks terrible... even with AO off the maps are dark and bland, it looks like no normal maps are on anything but the players, the asset textures look real bad quality.
I bought it partially based on the screen shots which looked good, but "live" the game looks just bad.
The cut-scenes look better than in-game... other than the lower resolution.