2.0b improvements to benefit ATI cards AND NV3x series

The importance of making a fancy looking game engine is readily apparent now with the accolades and interest that Crytek is drawing from the hardware community as ATI is apparently set to pay Crytek for Shader Model 2.0b update to its rendering path. The story gets more interesting though because of the NV3x and its DX9.0+ specs which in many cases, exceeded the specs for SM2.0b

As Crytek developed the now historical 1.2 patch for the game and included Shader model 3.0 ATI had to do something and get some money into game to convince Crytek to make new patch and include Shader model 2.0b for ATI cards.

Coincidentally, this patch would help NV3X cards in use as they use a similar instruction set and have a similar spec to the ATI R3xx and R4xx

The gist of the report again is more work done with fewer passes. Cant really argue with performance increases and it looks like this one does not involve bartering with Creative in any way.