I have attached a test that uses many effects and gradience. Just run this test on WinXP or Vista with Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 and you will see that it is entirely broken on this video card.

This has been fixed in Soma already but still exists in Marina and 1.2.2.

This issue badly breaks the Vancouver olympics application and you can load the following URL and check it out -
http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-medals/geo-view/

This also breaks all the controls because of the gradience effect applied on the controls. Hence this is a must-fix for vancouver app and to be targeted for JavaFX 1.2.3.

Refer some of the attached screenshots to get the severity of the issue. Disabling D3D fixes the issue (-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false).