A bit of a correction, while OpenGl specification does not force display lists to be stored server side there would be no sense keeping it client side on modern cards. And to explain what clootie said, while clipping is done in hardware it works with polygons which all will still need to be transformed before that and besides sphere in frustum check is so cheap that you should at least implement that before asking you?¢_Tre graphics card to render high polygon meshes.