I've been testing something this night. Spawned lots of 3d people. In both old and new versions of the SDK.
This one is the older version I use. With 35 characters on scene.
This is the new one. With 49 Van Buren characters (if I remember correctly they had a bit higher polygon count)
First is DirectX.
OpenGL
Very positive results. I hope it gets even better when I import the new models.
PS: the shader in openGL seems to react better to light sources.