And Zaei I expect you to answer =).

1. How do you create a point sprite, not radiating light or whatever, like in 3DMark2001 (the horse & female statues)? Most importantly how do you make point sprites, period.

2. How do you tell D3D to create a Hardware Transform & Lighting engine? Right now I'm using D3DCREATE_HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING, but should I be using D3DCREATE_PUREDEVICE?

3. How do you check if the video board in question supports FSAA? I have a function but it doesn't seem to work.

4. How do you check for functionality of pixel-shaders and the like?