"Seems that just by:

a. changing the VendorID/DeviceID from X800 to GF 6800
b. Wrapping the 3.0 shaders to 2.0b shaders.

You gain as much as a 20% performance boost in FarCry 1.2!!"

"Crytek uses the pixel/vertex shaders 2.0_b in the interior scenes heavily charged in per pixel lighting to return several sources of lighting on the only one way. The developers also called upon "Geometry Instancing" supported by SM 2.0_b for returned vegetation. Geometry Instancing proposed by NVIDIA is not reserved for Shader Model 3.0. According to Crytek Geometry Instancing and lighting SM 2._b respectively make gain up to 30 and 40 % of performances. Visually, there is no difference between Shader Model 2.0 and 2.0_b."

http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/fc12-2.shtml