Arrays.sort or iterative search?

I have a large integer array of mixed values I want to search for the highest and lowest values. I have a method to iterate through each element in the array. I was thinking Arrays.sort() might be faster, however I need to retain the order of the elements in the array.

Would it be more efficient to:
a) Stick with the iterative method
b) Make a copy of the array, sort and then take the first and last elements and lowest and highest respectively

Any suggestions much appreciated

Have you heard of the QuickSelect algorithm? It's quite good at finding the min/max (I think in practice it's about O(log(n)) average, O(n) worst case).

If you only need a few min/max value, I'd say stick with the quickselect algorithm. Otherwise, it may just be better to use the full quicksort routine (which is probably the algorithm used by Array.sort()).

edit:

I was mistaken. The best way to find the #1 min/max is to iterate. The best way to find the #nth min/max is to use quickselect, or quicksort if you need to find a lot of min/max values.