I had heard that hideentity was slow. Sorry if not.
The problems with a Single Surface are two:
1 - You can't hide one single quad to gain speed. In a surface, you render the whole surface or you render nothing.
2 - I have noticed some slowdown when using it with letters to make phrases, because you need to change every time every single quad to contain the letter you need (with texture vertex coords).
Of course it is more difficult to implement than sprites, but the gain in speed is very good! I suggest you to download some samples from the code archives and change them to fit your needs.
Good Luck!
The problems with a Single Surface are two:
1 - You can't hide one single quad to gain speed. In a surface, you render the whole surface or you render nothing.
2 - I have noticed some slowdown when using it with letters to make phrases, because you need to change every time every single quad to contain the letter you need (with texture vertex coords).
Of course it is more difficult to implement than sprites, but the gain in speed is very good! I suggest you to download some samples from the code archives and change them to fit your needs.
Good Luck!