I'm not sure if anybody is going to have the technical knowledge for this one, but does anybody know the cost of having multiple meshes in a model that call the same texture, versus having one mesh that has been wielded together so that the texture is only "called" once? The difference being that the wielded model will have more polygons to achieve that.

A simple example would be say two rectangles to form a cross. If you had 2 separate rectangles you'd have 24 triangles. But it would have to call the same texture twice. Or you could wield them and you'd get more like 40+ triangles but only need to call the texture once.

Its probably different for game engines, so I was wondering if anybody had the scoop on the Skyrim engine handling of such things?