randomizer said:
1gb is definitely important at resolutions above 1920x1200 with AA, but by then your 8800GT will feel a little weak anyway. Now 2 8800GTs in SLI with 1gb each... that's a powerhouse right there. You could probably run 2560x1600 with AA. It all depends on the game really. Oblivion loves more than 512mb VRAM at high res and AA, stalker loves more VRAM even at lower resolutions.
The problem is that with only a 256 bit memory bus, all that extra ram can't be used efficently. If it had a 512 bit bus (or higher) this would be a worthwhile card. But, with the smaller bus, the card can't effectively access all that ram the way it needs too. Best case scenario is to have a 1:1 memory bus and vram. But, the lowest you really want to go is 1:2 bus to vram. For instance, a card with a 128 bit bus, shouldn't really have more than 256 vram. More than that will not produce the results that you would think (or pay for).
See this review:
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=715&p=0
Here is their final conclusion:
It would seem that loading a GeForce 8800 GT graphics card with more than 512MB of memory is rather pointless, though I suspect Nvidia was well aware of this when they announced that there would be a 1GB version of the 8800 GT. This is very much like those Radeon HD 2600XT and GeForce 8600 GTS graphics cards that come with 512MB of memory rather just 256MB of memory which is all they need. The 512MB 8600 GTS and 2600XT cards were really just gimmicks and that is all the 1GB 8800 GT is in our opinion as we never saw any kind of performance advantage to having the extra memory.
Although we do suspect that the 1GB 8800 GT may show a more convincing performance gain in games such as Crysis at 2560x1600 we still see this as being rather pointless since playable performance will not be obtained at such an extreme resolution. So then it is safe to say that in all playable situations the 1GB 8800 GT is no faster than the original 512MB version which is a shame since users stand to pay roughly $40-$50 US more for the 1GB card.
Looking over their benchmarks, I didn't see any situation where the card did any better than the 512 version. If you were to buy this card for the 1 gig of vram, you are being suckered. The card itself is simply not fast enough to be able to run resolutions where that extra ram would be useful. But, they did go on to say that the cooler on the card was good, so while it didn't perform better than the 512 version, it isn't a bad card. But, it cost more than 512 mb versions, so it is really not a good option. It is a gimmick, all the way.