As someone who enjoys the hell out of their HOTAS joystick setup, I would recommend waiting until BF3 comes out before investing in one. The helicopters in BC2 are incredibly unrealistic and fly better with a mouse. Now if you are looking to get into DCS A-10C, Blackshark, or Take on Helicopters then by all means invest in a quality HOTAS setup.
This also applies to GPUs, don't upgrade for a game that hasn't even come out yet. If you feel like you need more performance when it goes retail and drivers have been optimized, then go for it. Crossfire works great in BC2 - I would expect the same in BF3.
re: surround/eyefinity - you are required to have two cards to run surround (nvidia side), so 2x 580's sounds fine for that type of setup. I would definitely opt for the 3GB cards though. I've been very happy with my 2x 6950 2GB setup in eyefinity. I ran a 1GB 5870 for a long time and it became VRAM limited at 4x AA @ 6048x1080. With 2GB cards I can easily run 4x AA or higher.
This also applies to GPUs, don't upgrade for a game that hasn't even come out yet. If you feel like you need more performance when it goes retail and drivers have been optimized, then go for it. Crossfire works great in BC2 - I would expect the same in BF3.
re: surround/eyefinity - you are required to have two cards to run surround (nvidia side), so 2x 580's sounds fine for that type of setup. I would definitely opt for the 3GB cards though. I've been very happy with my 2x 6950 2GB setup in eyefinity. I ran a 1GB 5870 for a long time and it became VRAM limited at 4x AA @ 6048x1080. With 2GB cards I can easily run 4x AA or higher.
