Sure I am fine with 500 boxes :P it is just not much compared to the 2k Quadraxas mentioned ;\)
A question I came up with today was if it is possible not to render shadows (depthmaps) for all objects but only for a few to make things a bit faster (like NOFLAG1 for GS views).
And I found out that there are some problems with alphatesting when using fp textures with most ati cards...