4870-1GB begins shipping next week

According to a majority of retailers of who expect some stock next week. Some retailers have the date as early as Monday (25 August). Also note that the quantity is very limited, so if you want one now is the chance to make a move. Understandably the card is priced 7% higher than its 512MB sibling. That is identical to the official MSRP from AMD ($329US). In terms of performance, two of these should perform identical to the 4870X2 but with higher power consumption.

To give you an idea about the VRAM usage for some of the popular games:
 

All the numbers are from an excellent write up by Nick Evanson here, click the link for more detailed VRAM usage numbers at various resolutions and settings.

Update: HardwareZone has the first review up. Apparently the only scenario where the extra VRAM came in handy was .. Crysis. Unfortunately they did not test other games that could benefit from this extra VRAM.

Stumble it!