ChrisB
Your goal is to create the same effect as the from NVIDIA Cascades demo?
It would be nice to see the shader effects on it, but anyway would be very impressive project.



Look at this video and Please wait a little.
http://www.public.gamefactor.eu/towertest.swf

My specs:

Operating System
Windows System : Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 6.00.6001 (Service Pack 1)
Platform Compliance : x86

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Speed : 3GHz
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 1 Unit(s)
Type : Dual-Core
Internal Data Cache : 2x 32kB, Synchronous, Write-Thru, 8-way, 64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache : 6MB, ECC, Synchronous, ATC, 24-way, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing

System
System : Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EP35-DS3P
Mainboard : Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EP35-DS3P
Bus(es) : PCI PCIe IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
Multi-Processor (MP) Support : Yes
Multi-Processor Advanced PIC (APIC) : Yes
System BIOS : Award Software International, Inc. F2
Total Memory : 4GB DIMM DDR2 DDR3

Chipset
Model : Giga-Byte P35/G33/G31 Processor to I/O Controller
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 333MHz (1.33GHz)
Total Memory : 4GB DIMM DDR2 DDR3
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 400MHz (800MHz)

Memory Module(s)
Memory Module : Corsair CM2X2048-6400C5DHX 2GB DIMM DDR2 PC2-6400U DDR2-800 (5.0-5-5-18 3-22-6-3)
Memory Module : Corsair CM2X2048-6400C5DHX 2GB DIMM DDR2 PC2-6400U DDR2-800 (5.0-5-5-18 3-22-6-3)

Video System
Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ (512MB DDR3, 625MHz/1.45GHz/2x1.10GHz, PCIe 1.00 x16, SM4.0)

Graphics Processor
Adapter : GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+ (1.01, 512MB, 1.69GHz)