I''m trying to do a 3rd person game with prerendered 640x480 backgrounds. Does anyone know the fastest way to draw the backgrounds without using textures bigger than 256x256? Or should I use DirectX for this sort of thing? Thanks.

well u can just break donw the background into 4 segments of the screen. Break down the pisture that u want to use into 4 segments. then when rendering place each of the brokens up pcitures segments onto a different segment that u have draw wiht say a call to GL_QUADS.