I've recently studied the latest benchmarks for Pixel Shader 3.0 and they worry me. With Age of Empires III, at maximum quality, you can just about exceed 40fps with a 7800GTX Extreme, and not a single ATi card can achieve 50fps at any respectable resolution with or without anti-aliasing at high quality. But when I look at cards that only support pixel shader 2, such as the X850XT platinum, although the results aren't enormously better, it is possible to achieve 52 frames per second at 1024x768 on high quality. Therefore I ask, is it possible to turn off Shader 3 effects in games or the Graphics driver? I am looking at some point in the near future to buy a PC with an X1800XT (or whatever slightly faster variant is out after it) but if at 1280x1024 with high image quality I'm limited to 29fps I won't be very happy. I'm sure you see the problem.
Pixel Shader 3 only works in the new ATI cards ie. the X1000 series. Nvidia cards have used it for a while. Pixel Shader 4.0 will be out sometime next year.
