When I set up my shop in SL, I used a texture size of 2048 x 2048 for some displays, where I needed a lot of text that wouldn't have been readable at a lower resolution. Those textures never caused any performance problems.
Now I'm restricted to 1024 x 1024 and found that I can live with that, although I often have to use more than 1 prim for a display. I could live with the restriction that is, if my textures would actually be displayed at this size.
When I enter my store, 1024 pixel textures (like the store rules) are displayed at 256 x 256 and don't load any further (I tested it with 2 different NVidia cards). When I walk close, they eventually load at 512 x 512. The text is still not readable at this size. Only when I "zoom" very close onto a display (which makes no sense, since I can only see about 1/4 or less of it then) and wait for a minute or more, the original size is displayed.
I don't know why this change was made, since I never had any performance problems in the past, when lots of large textures were displayed at best quality (as it should be in a shop). Perhaps it's only a client setting? If so, where can I change it if I want textures to be displayed at the best possible quality?
I'm also still quite interested in the answer to the following questions, which were ignored so far:
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