Am I thinking correctly?  All the reviews that I have read so far state that the 8800 GT is limited due to the 512 MB. Since we now have 1 GB cards available from at least two companies, wouldn't this be the hot set up in SLI?  The benchmarks here at Tom's show that the 8800 GT OC smokes just about all with only 512 MB.  The one OC 8800 GT from Zotak running at 660 MHz should make for the hottest set up going?  right?

The 1gb doesn't help much since its limited by its memory bus.  It's just a gimmick.

In most cases will still lose handily to an 8800GTX.  In most cases throwing huge amounts of RAM on a card (more than came stock) is just a gimick.  Someone else who has seen Lexx I see...
 
-mcg

 
I have yet to see the 8800gt "lose handily" at any resolution at or below 1600x1200.  The GT is within 10% in most cases.  In fact, 2 x 8800gt in SLI best the 8800gtx more often than not for less money.

The extra ram, even though the card is fast, is kind of wasted.  The memory bus just can't take advantage of all that ram.  If they up'd the memory bus on these cards to like 512 or more, it may have been a different story.

 
True.  That seems to be the issue at heart... not total onboard memory.

Thank you everybody.. Hmmm I just checked out the meager few reviews on the 1 gb 8800gt..  Looks like 5+ percent is about the max. the 1 gb gets ya.  I overlooked the bus interface limitation of 256 bits, but this is also a driver issue as well I believe.. It looks like the 1 GB is more of a marketing ply for now...  shame..  I also noticed that the interface bus on the GTX is 348 bits on the 768 mb board. So the chap that said a 512 bit interface would be ideal for the 1 gb was right on the mark.  Well, heck, anyway it does appear to me that two 8800gts at 512 mb in SLI (even 3 SLI!!) is a pretty cost effective way to get into some high performance graphics.  Thanks again. Kai (Brunnen-G)  

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.

Why didn't they put that 1GB on the 9800GTX?  It would have done wonders there.

It costs enough as is. I'm sure Palit will add 1gb to it on one of their models.

 
 
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/docu [...] 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.

 
 
Some people are having a really hard time understanding this.  The memory bus is holding the card back, not the amount of vRAM.  Sure, 1 gb of vRAM would help at higher resolutions if you had a 512 bit memory bus.  Unfortunately, that's not the case.

WOW!!!  No wonder the 9800GX2 hasn't performed in benches the way people were hoping,  I just checked and it only has 256 bits per GPU and this was supposed to be the card to best the GTX ULTRA that has 384 bits mem. bus?  Way to go Nvidia.  I am thinking that both ATI and Nvidia  have the "if its a new model (name) they will buy" attitude. It seems like the reviews of their "latest and greatest" have left the reviewers somewhat disappointed.  

 
 
Pretty much got it there. Maybe some difference at the most on some specific games. On most, absolutely nothing.

Apparently the 1gb does help it, but only at 2560x1600 with 4xAA and 16xAF:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] page13.asp

Oblivion is borderline playable