Special Effects -
Personally, I like to select bullets that will say something about ME, which is why I place such a heavy emphasis on bullet aesthetics. If you insist on being all...ballistic about the issue, there are bullets that are made to go fast, which means reduced time in flight, which means flatter trajectory, which means higher terminal kinetic energy. The same bullets will even safely give a muzzle velocity boost to our friends, the modern high intensity cartridge.
On the left, a GS Custom bullet above a more traditional shank Speer product. The GS shank is approximately bore or land diameter while the narrow driving bands are approximately groove diameter. The driving bands offer so little resistance to being formed by rifling, and there is so much less bore friction, start pressure is dramatically reduced and less pressure is required to keep the bullet traveling down the length of a barrel. Loaded to potential, the initial pressure spike is much lower, while the average pressure to follow is higher and more persistent then would be expected with a more traditional bullet design. While not the answer for all applications, GS Custom bullets are usually good for an extra 75 - 100 fps in muzzle velocity over conventional bullets. This is not to disparage Speer's or any other company's designs. Bullet selection is very application specific and there are lots of applications and lots of types of bullets.