OpenGL, will simply apply this version of your texture.
That means that your textured object won't look as good if it's small on your screen as it could if you were using gluBuildMipmaps, especially...

Sorry, but that simply isn't true!

DisLis with QuadStrips: 81 FPS
DisLis with Quads: 20 FPS

Optimasation doesn't seem to get so far, Strips are faster than no-strips even in DisLis.
Go and do...

no I haven't forget that...

Should I place the ext_compiled_range thing in list or not and does that lead to optimum speed? (if that exists :-) )

To sum up my performance tests with my system:
The fastest way of rendering the terrain was:

Display List with Quad Strips

If the Quad Strips are build with VAs or with glBegin(GL_QUAD_STRIP);...

I think this might be of some interest too...

I've just changed tristrips to quadstrips and got an extraboost from 70 fps to 81 fps!!!

So it seems quads aren't as bad as I thaught ...

I've made some performance tests yesterday :-) DL with tristrips or VAs (compiled and uncompiled) are equally fast, DL with quads are slower.
DL versus compiled VAs without DL: DL is about 60%...