i`ve been modeling some houses for a project and was curious, to make them detailed or to use textures, which is best? this model is at 1700 polys cos i modeled all the beams, if i model the door and the shutters thats another few hundred, then double that to get the interior modeled, is this to much for a mesh? would textures be a better option?

This is too much, u can reduce the Polycount with a Texture/Normal Map/Shader

cYa Sebastian

Agree... use bump or normal map shader... effect will be the same but poly count half than now.
if this house isn't main building in your game 2000+ polys is to much

ok so how do i apply a bump map to a mesh? in med? cos when i exported a mesh from unwrap the bump and specular maps don`t appear to get exported with it.

u need normal map as second skin to make bump/normal_map effect...
to create normal map searych for TGAtoDot3 soft by Ati
(U can find this soft at ATI/AMD website)
just one click and done and it's no matter what graphic card U have (I have GForce)
works good even with colour tga not only gray scaled

got a link to the soft ware, i can`t find it on there site

nevermind i found a photoshop plugin that does it, but how do i apply it as a bump map?

I like your building, but like these guys said, the less polys you can manage, the better. Just a few days ago, I found this free model on turbosquid that is the same design as your model. It's under 1000 polys, you should download it and check out how the textures and model were designed so you can incorporate those ideas into your own design.

TurboSquid house model

looking much better than your earlier models.

what a lovely house i like it. parallax shader to keep the "indentation" and stuff of the beams.

julz