I started a little side-project to learn texturing better. I create some models (requested by the oblivion-community) for oblivion. They are fairly low-poly for the oblivion engine, around 1500 tris maximum. I did this shield in about 3 hours. 30 minutes modelling, the rest texturing.
That should be posted to “Work in Progress” forum.
But to the model: It doesn’t look like 1500 tris. You might have placed them a bit better, to make some edges beveled. The upper arcs on this shield are very dense even for Oblivion. Or another model has 1500 tris.