Shader Model 3.0 to dominate for three years?
 

Some intriguing things have been bubbling to the surface in the murky cauldron of graphics rumors over the past week or so. Perhaps because of delays to Microsoft's Longhorn OS, the next generation of graphics chips from ATI and NVIDIA may limit their GPUs' shader capabilities essentially to what we have now in the GeForce 6 series and DirectX 9's Shader Model 3.0.

http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/7258