yes, faster in benchies for tougher games at 1920x1200 with high aa also. Nonsense that you need a 1gb card to be useful.
1gb is still no where near being needed, people got all uppity from two things, the GTA 4 "memory monitor" which, could be complete nonsense for all we know. Keep in mind gfx makers heavily invested in the game, and want people to buy cards, so what better way than giving people a number that persaudes people they have to upgrade. It might be the uncompressed texture memory needed for all we know. The fact is the game plays the SAME no matter if the game says i'm using settings for 700mb or 1.1gb, on a 1gb card, IE, its NOT gone over 1gb or performance would have plummeted.
The other thing was comparisons between 512/1gb 4870 when they finally came out. Except it was 5-10% faster across ALL resolutions, so it simply had faster/newer memory, as in lower latency newer chips most likely, also possible new bios's simply set the memory more aggressive as they found a stable faster setting. there was maybe one game at 2560x1600 that showed a massive performance difference between the cards and thats the ONLY time the 1gb made a difference, even then it was with heavy AA.
its still slightly more important on Nvidia cards as quite clearly their memory usage is less efficient you can literally see in benchmarks where their cards run out of memory and its always very different to ATI cards. however you still don't need 1gb, going over 512mb doesn't mean you need 1gb, it might mean you need as little as 513mb. In all likelyhood 512mb is only just not enough for Nvidia, probably 600-700mb would be fine but the next step up is 1gb. With Ati with more efficient memory usage, you simply don't need more than 512mb right now unless you play the 3 games in 2560x1600 with 4-8xaa and are being a ***** about it frankly.
What would be interesting is more sites doing comparisons of brand new cards and memory usage. A benchmark of a brand new 4870 512mb with a updated bios with same settings as a 1gb version inside the bios. I think you'd find that 5-10% performance advantage isn't really there, and its almost never really faster.
Theres literally no other explanation a 1gb card can't be faster than an identical 512mb card when its not memory limited. The only other option when only the memory has changed, is the memory has changed. nothing more or less.
While you can get 4890's at £160 its still the better deal, you can get 4770's around the same price but the option of no crossfire and one slot for an identical price, very very similar performance and less hassels seems an easy choice. Also while its often touted as a great option its very very rare in reality that anyone add's a second card for xfire/sli a year or two later, its normally simply a better option to sell and buy a new single card. But in those rare instances the single 4890 has a better option for crossfiring in the future for cheaper. Theres also more headroom for price drops on the next year. IE when the next cards are out the 4770 will only drop to £60, the 4890 might drop to £90.