You can think of my application as drawing a very large ball-and-stick diagram (or graph). At times, this graph can get very large, where the number of elements even outnumbers the pixels on the screen. Currently I am simply passing all of my textures (as GL_POINTS) and lines to the graphics card using VBO's.

When the number of elements outnumbers the number of pixels, is this the most efficient way to do this? Or should I do some calculations on the CPU side before handing everything over to the GPU?

If it matters, I do use GL_DEPTH_TEST and GL_ALPHA_TEST. I do some alpha blending, but probably not enough to make a huge performance difference.

My scene can be static at times, but the user has control over a typical arc-ball camera and can pan, rotate, or zoom. It is during these operations that performance degradation is noticeable.