Correct. In sli the ram doesn't stack so you're still running 1gb and while your res is fine running heavily molded games like skyrim is probably going to be too much.
So picking up a 2GB version of a gtx760 or 7850 would be better than sli'ing a gtx480 or 560ti, or would the gtx760 or 7850 not have enough oomph w/ 2GB? I guess my question then would be, with my setup, where is the sweet spot in the $200 or less range, used?
For that game, at that resolution, the minmum for a decent amount of eye candy + good fps is really a 7950. With the mining thing going south, you should be able to find one around $230-250.
I play the game @1080p with high settings on my 660ti and i7 3770k. I get 60+ FPS (vertical synch on). So I assume 2 of those cards would do fine, especially with the overclocked CPU.
what does the rest of your rig look like? What cpu are you running? Also, keep in mind that windows 7 and FX chips mean that you should disable core parking