Ballisters and replication

Okay. Probably a silly question, but perhaps not.

I know that you can make a staircase ballister (railing) using a single prim and replicating a texture of a single ballister multiple times.

The question is this... which induces less lag...
a. Using a small texture that will be replicated 60 times per use
b. Using a larger (60x) texture that will not be replicated (I know that a 1024 pixel max is supported...assume that the texture would be that large.)

Now.. the fly in the ointment if that was too easy for you experts....
I am using this as a signature house/residence decoration on multiple prims... right now my estimate is probably 20-30 prims and the prims are averaging 8.5 x 1.4m2... so you can see the size of the texture area which needs to be rendered even at 64 meter draw distance.

Though I have experimented with this... I am not sur of my results due to a very unstable ping rate and a bit of a lack of understanding in interpreting the alt-1 numbers.

short answer, the small texture being repeated will be faster than the large texture not being repeated. Your client only needs load the texture once when you see it in world... doesnt matter if its tiled 1000 times or no times.

longer answer, while the smaller image being tiled will load faster, if this is going to be a "signature" piece, I would personally recommend making something larger and of higher quality. Especially if you plan on reusing the same texture over and over. Think about it... if you make one image, then tile and or stretch or what have you the image on many different prims so that it will fit, the client still only needs to load the image once. You can make one texture go a *long* way if you make it correctly and manipulate it well in world.
my solution to this problem would be in between making a single texture with multiple ballisters and a small texture with one... I would recommend making a fairly large image of a single ballister. The client need only load the texture once, then the client takes that information and tiles and or stretches skews etc. the texture on prims throughout the house. If you make the image of a decent quality, you can have good looking ballisters all the way from ten meters tall on the outside of the house, to 0.05 meters on the side of a chair, and the client only has to load one, moderately sized, texture.