what are people on about, you can get far better dx9 games today than you could when dx9 came out, and a year after dx9 came out. the effects that a card "can" do mean next to nothing. you can put lots of sparkly effects into a game, using every new effect, but not put any effort into the textures and design.
the game look has well, not so much to do with the hardware and effects, but the design. design improves, people do use more effects, but they use the same old effects in a much better way aswell. its not like in dx8 you couldn't make something look a little like water, and maybe now you can maybe make water look better, but if you don't program it well you can use a new effect on water but make it look static and crap and not at all realistic.
for instance, stalker probo uses HDR more than any other game i've seen but to be fair it just over uses it. theres a point where its ok, and it does look good, but it also applies the same very intensive lighting effects to every blade of grass which you can't notice but uses a lot of power. its all about the quality of textures and enviroments and not overusing effects just because they are there. I think the textures in stalker are very poor and without HDR enabled it doesn't come close to taxing any system really, but as soon as you enable it framerate is hugely effected, talking 50-60fps on a gts maybe at 1600x1200, but turn off HDR and you're getting 170-230fps. its very much a case of an overly old delayed engine smacking in a newer effect last minute to try to make everything look newer, but not using the effect efficiently at all.
