I just noticed that what I had earlier is *much* less than I thought it was. I also discovered that the kps value in the debug panel is roughly half of what it actually is. With 640,000 visible polygons, I'm getting 30 fps which means 19,200,000 polygons per second. I haven't updated the drivers or anything yet nor received my new video card, but this was more than amazing. You can have 300,000 visible polygons and still get above 60 fps. Tossing in LOD, collision, possible shaders, and other things, you could still have at least 100,000 visible polygons (500,000 with LOD used), and still have a smooth 60 fps. I'm writing a program to do my benchmarking experiment I carried out nearly a half year ago so you can see for yourself how good the frame rates and stuff can get.

The only disadvantages I know of is that getting collision to work is a little trickier (I haven't done anything with collision yet so I don't know). Lighting is also a little trickier, but otherwise not all that bad. Overall, the advantages heavily outweigh the few minor disadvantages giving no competition at all (like an Olympic athlete to an infant that can't crawl).