Up to about 150, just display them.
Up to about 2000, it's reasonable to use MarkerManager or Clusterer in
Javascript on the client side.
Above that you need to consider a server based solution. That could be
client side clustering or client side marker management (so that each
time the map moves or zooms, the client requests a list of markers from
the server, and it returns a list of 150 or less) or have a server
process that generates tiles on which the markers are painted and use
them as a GTileLayerOverlay.
--
Mike Williams
http://econym.org.uk/gmap