I'm considering doing the exact same thing, at least as long as the latest release remains in beta.

The latest release screwed with the framerates for my project pretty badly, and I don't think I need anything more than 8.1 shader effects right now anyway... (specifically water and terrain).

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 w/HT 1 Gig 400mhz DDR SDRAM 128mb NVidia GeForce FX 5200