Well since time was short I bought a very nice city model which fullfilled all my requirements. But unfortunately even with a 24,000 poly city 900$ 3dgs pro crawled at mere 4 FPS

where 150$ beyond virtual ran solid at 35fps (on vincent's machine, ran 40-50 on mine i think).
By the way, all this low fps with only city and car and nothing else (not traffic, no jewels, no extra stuff)