Actually no, lava and water displays fine without Optifine or MCPatcher, things I'm missing that I've noticed are Coal and Redstone, they come up as weird greenish brown blocks when thrown on the ground or drop from mining the ore. The texture pack I use is DokuCraft if that makes a difference.
Also OptiFine HD B3 Standard for Minecraft 1.3.2 just got me a crash same as MCPatcher, I'm guessing it's because it's compatible with build #225 and not build #251
Ok NM about this, found the issue doesn't lie with Forge but one of my other mods