I dunno if this has anything to do with anything but I thought I'd share it. these are pictures of dx8.1 shaders on the source engine and they look very nice, I always thought shaders needed to be dx9 to look that good :P.
http://www.freewebs.com/buluen/shader.htm

nice - you sure they're dx8.1, that's damn amazing, I also thought they had to be 9.

Oh well, my Radeon 9800XT arrived this morning, sweeeet heaven! So I need to fit that ASAP!