I understand that the GeForce is a programable card, and the "language" used to program the card is generic to the hardware (maybe I phrased that poorly?)? Thus, the result is any new programable card can run one of the new DirectX 8 or OpenGL (doom3) games? Is that correct?

What happens when someone trys to play a game (like Doom3, et al.) designed to make use of the GeForce3 features, but they have an older video card (eg, GeForce2)? Will Doom3 be playable on older video cards? Will ANY games that make use of the GeForce3 features be playable on older cards? What will the games look like?

Just wondering, because I'm really impressed with the preliminary screen shots, but I can not/wont justify more than $300 for a video card.