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i guess one thing i didn't consider is the fact that only people with crappy cards complain about shader support, so even though there are only a few absolute rubbish cards among you guys they tend to stick out like dogs' balls


i am more concerned about notebook graphics cards. a 8600 in a notebook is damn hot and eats ridiculously much power. so, designing a casual game, i'd take notebook GPUs like Intel x3100 or radeon x1250 as reference.
for desktop games, i guess the gf6 series could be the base for the game development today (keeping in mind that the average game takes 12-18 months to hit the stage).

@len: that is because of EA's good fallbacks, and most of the shader effects aren't even displayed by your card (so far to "max detail"). but, the truth is, a radon 9200 can't run quake3arena (early 2000, no hardware shaders) in 1028x1024 and all details above 50 fps. i once had one myself, i switched to geForce 4200 these days.

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