Animated Sprites

How to store the image information for animated sprites ? I thought of copying all frames into one big texture an then only change the UV coords,but there are too many old cards out there,which only can handle 256x256 pixel textures. Another thing whould be to store the frames in systemmemory and then copy them to the texture using glTexSubImage2D.

Any ideas what whould be the best way ?

PS:i hope my english wasn’t too bad.