I understand your experience. I just don't see the point in spending almost the same amount of money or more to be stuck with an E1400.
Your E2180 would also bottleneck a GTX 260. While you say this wouldn't keep you from buying it, it's still a fact. And not everyone wants to overclock, some people don't feel comfortable with it. This way he wouldn't have to.
While you didn't say the E1400 would beat a 7750, you implied that the 7750 was only slightly faster than the E1400 at stock, which according the benchmarks isn't really right either.
My general point being that he'd have no problems whatsoever with playing Crysis, and wouldn't have to worry about buying things in parts, or worry about trying to overclock.
As for AM3, just because a socket that's been out for a matter of months doesn't have CPUs that are "noticeably" faster than the top end chips for a socket that's been out for years doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile advantage.
All this being said, the OP is happy with his build. He has options, I'm sure he'll take them into account.