I was try to open some pixelshaders or vertexshaders patches, and only run until the ps 2.0 or vs 2.0, the patches that needs ps 3.0 or vs 3.0 don´t run for me.
jo
if you are not running bootcamp, you might need to enable 3d accelleration in some virtual machines.
there is also a shader version test available that can tell you what your card really supports.
be aware that there are some ps/vs 3.0 features that are only supported by nvidia graphic cards, you might run into problems with shaders that use these (e.g. texture lookups inside vertex shader).