The features don't matter if it takes a whole generation actually see the feature being used in earnest.
Thats what your not getting . r300 based cards are now beomcing the low end and is quickly replacing the dx 8 cards . You can get a dx 9 capable card in the 300$ pcs now . Ati has dx 9 graphics cores intergrated into thier motherboards .
The shift took along time . THe problem for the consoles is that the shift has happened and we will start to see engines taking advnatage of this in the very near future ( unreal 3 engine , beefed up source , serious , cyrtech engines ) because cards capable of this have been around for such a long time .
Funny when you see people still on DX7 level hardware but that's neither here nor there at the moment.
Which for people who are actually buying the games on the pcs those people have upgraded in the 3 or 4 years since dx 9 cards hit hte market . Sure I don't deny that there are still pcs with dx 7 , but its been long enough and the dx 9 cards have a big enough installed base to make the move . Just like we've seen tons of games designed around dx 8 with fall back paths or simply shaders turned off for dx 7
Console gamers *buy* a new console to play next generation games do pc gamers do the same and if they do..how many flock to the ultra high end where all the new feature are useable in some way...the answer is not many.
Except the r300 is capable of many of these features in games as its been shown . The only thing the r300 isn't capable of is hdr . Anything in sm3.0 can be done in sm2.0 and the r300s do g. i .
So that is the one feature that will have to be turned off , hdr .
Let's be real the midrange and lowend aren't where many people go to use HDR and SM 3.0 and game at 1600x1200 but that's what pc gamers buy midrange and lowend video hardware.
Except everything dx 9 card can do sm3.0 shaders , they just have to be unlooped or take more passes as sm2.0 shaders . The only thing they can't use is hdr . How ever you can use the interger version and it should give pretty decent hdr quality. Of course the r300 users will have to run in a lower res but those people still on those cards have been having to reduce res since the new crop of dx 9 cards came out last year and the more demanding games started coming out .
The problem is the consoles have the same feature set as 3 -4 year old video cards .While consoles of course have much more powerfull cards than these 3-4year old cards it doesn't change the fact that these cards exist and can lower thier res to keep up in the effects game . Developers will still code for these features .
Justl ook at unreal 3 engine .
