The intake manifold works at any speed, it's the tuned-length butterfly valves that are being discussed. The 2.8 manifold has very long port runners, so the resonance or bouncing of the air collumn will pump more air in at low speeds, improving torque. At high speeds the air collumn is too long, and the pressure pulse arrives out of sync, with the intake valve closed. The manifold's butterfly valves open to shortcut the paths, so the pressure waves will be in better sync again. If you look at the graph at 12V.org, you can see a chart showing how the (nearly) peak torque is maintained to a higher RPM.