VBO Efficiency

Would it be inefficient to use, say a grid of 5x5 VBOs, for a patch of terrain over using one larger VBO containing the entire patch?

I used the grid so I can manage the LOD easier but I’m wondering if grouping everything together into one VBO would be worth the trouble. I currently get around 8 fps displaying 400,000 triangles at my maximum terrain resolution. This is on a fairly weak laptop with a Dual-Core 2.1GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 but I would think that I could get much better results.

I recently moved my ‘many’ VBOs to a single one. I could see absolutely no difference, I think, thanks/due to the fact that I didn’t bind all the VBO at every frame, but only some of them (about the same quantity than you).

My guess is that if you bind hundreds of VBOs everytime, then yes, it could have a noticeable impact, but a dozen or two dozen not.