Have you tried mat_bones? On my old PC with a GeForce 9600GT I had nearly 5 million bones-animated polygons on-screen at the same time with diffuse lighting and textures.
mat_bones? I personally didnt know about it. Okay i dont need it, cause my games are low end :P(visual) But interesting.
Gretes Rackscha
MY Website with news of my projects: (for example my current Muliplayer Bomberman, GenesisPrecompiler for LiteC and TileMaster, an easy to use Tile editor) Sparetime-Development