Colin Mcrae 2004 makes pretty extensive use of shaders.
If you define extensive by has a few then I guess. In eventual terms shaders should be replacing texture maps- that will be extensive.
Pete-
Ben, Hardware.fr's X700XT review shows the 5900XT in a less-than-flattering light with their games selection. The 5900XT averages 70% of the performance of a 9800P at 10x7 4x8, 16x12 0x0, and 16x12 4x8.
Remember your nV naming. The 5900XT was only 66% of the price of the R9800Pro. Besides that, I'm talking about how useless DX9 shader hardware has been despite the hype. How much have you missed having it Pete?
Blastman-
I suspect just about every game being released these days has a ?fair? amount of shaders
If by fair amount you mean miniscule then perhaps. You can count the amount of shaders utilized in 99% of games being released right now with your fingers- this is
two years after all of the PR BS stating how huge they were going to be. It hasn't happened yet and it won't for some time.
The much stronger DX9 shader engine on the R300 cards likely helps it run better in heavier DX8 shader situations too.
I can throw benches back showing the boards running Halo neck and neck running DX9 class shaders- and all of them sucking wind doing it. The R3x0 boards are complete crap for running anything resembling a medium shader load. I've been running my R9800Pro now for about eight months, and the extremely small amount of shader limited titles I've purchased(read- every one I know about) all run very poorly on my R9800Pro.
The DX8 path looks pretty good on HL2. On my 9600XT, depending on how the game runs, I might run it in DX8 and use 8AF, rather than DX9 and no AF. Same for Farcry, what?s the point of having nice shader-rendered water when it gets blurry after 10 ft because of no AF.
Have they fixed AF with shaders yet? Since the enormous avalanche of shader heavy titles(heh) is here I haven't picked up a shader limited game since D3 and AF was screwed up with every title when used in conjunction with shaders(although- due to an old bug in ATi's drivers it used to work in Halo, they fixed the bug and it screwed up the AF again).