thanks for the encouragement everyone! Its a good motivator
jadedsoul - sadly the mesh is around 23 million…which I achieved through having lots of subtools!!! I was sloppy when I built it and it resulted in far too many hidden faces… which has meant that without a lot of rework I can add further details…
But of course it is nice to be able to view 23million poly’s
I am running an Intel core duo 2.13Ghz
3gigs of ram and a Geforce 8800 Gt
I got the machine earlier this year and this is the first ‘real’ test for it
I have a fairly powerful notebook but I never use it for serious modelling… my old graphics card died earlier this year and I realised that I’d need extra fans to make sure my new stuff doesnt over heat too. My home pc is actually a little better than my work pc 
pixolClay, you want to see a wire of the hi res? it would be so dense… I can show off the game wires as soon as I get to that point
Seb Castilho, yeah I plan texturing the low poly version 