4.b Drawing Optimizations

This page is just giving a starting point for optimizations, the links below provide more in-depth information.

Make sure there are no OpenGL errors. Any error usually kills the framerate.
Enable backface culling with GL.Enable(EnableCap.CullFace) rather than relying on the Z-Buffer.
If you're drawing a scene that covers the whole screen each frame, only clear depth buffer but not the color buffer.
Organize drawing in a way that requires as few state changes as possible. Don't enable states that are not needed.
Use GL.Hint(...) wherever applicable.
Avoid Immediate Mode or Vertex Arrays in favor of Display Lists or Vertex Buffer Objects.
Use GL.DrawRangeElements instead of GL.DrawElements for a slight performance gain.
Take advantage of S3TC Texture compression and Vertex Cache optimizing algorithms.

Links:

Last edit of Links: March 2008