Couldn't you lessen the load of a game by running all of the textures through an image optimizer? You'd have the same quality textures but the files would all be smaller. I know that using high res textures slows things down so wouldn't the opposite speed things up?
Laptop:
i5 520m :: 4GB RAM :: ATI 5650 (700, 900)
i5 520m :: 4GB RAM :: ATI 5650 (700, 900)