adding textures to a level whats fastest?

I am going to build a level and it is to contain 6 512*512 textures what would be the best method

1. 6 sufaces and 6 brushes
2. 3 sufaces and 3 brushes containing 2 texture channels
3. tiling the 6 textures to a bigger image and using a single surface
4. seperate meshes for each texture (i know there are size limits to cards so this would be the safest)

1. Best option.
2. This won't work (or is at least pointless).
3. You will end up with a very large (non-square) texture: 1536x1024
4. Same as 1 but with slightly higher overhead.

Choose 1.

ive found function 2 to work very well testing with 2 surfaces and 4 textures

dont see why it cant work
or is pointless please explain ?

also this allows one tiling texture and a collection of detail textures on the second uv giving a boots to texture variation and detail

You didn't explain thoroughly the first time that you would be overlaying textures. If it works for you then fine.

The general rule of less surfaces (and entities) is good still stands.