I'm pretty stoked about all the new shaders, but I'm concerned about investing lots of effort into effects that very few people will be able to see.

1. Can any shaders, like bump-mapping, be done without DirectX 9? Which ones?

2. If I have DirectX 9 installed on my computer, but I don't have a video card to take advantage of it, then DirectX 9 effects like Normal Mapping simply won't play at all, right? And if there isn't a fallback programmed into the shader, the entire object will be messed up, right?

3. Are there other effects that require specific hardware capabilities or fallback options? (For instance, if somebody has a lousy 3D card, and they play a game with a burning torch made of particles--will they just see nothing, or will their FPS just drop?)