Hesitated between 4850 Gainward golden sample 1Gb and basic HD4870 512MB!

One of my friend wants to buy a GPU, but he hesitated between 4850 Gainward golden sample 1GB and basic HD4870 512MB! Almost the same price. So what will be the difference in overall perfomances of these 2 cards spcially while playing games like crysis at high resolution 1680 X 1050 / 1920 X 1200 Pixels.

THANK YOU!

HD4870 is the most powerful, even with less memory, and HD 4850 1GB is rarely useful for the latest games.

I would definitely lean towards the 4870, the increased GPU power is going to have more effect on performance than the extra 512mb. of memory. Most games aren't going to properly utilize that much video memory anyways.

Get the 1GB 4850. Better yet, get the 1GB 4870 if you can. With your CPU and high resolutions as you mentioned, 1GB will be much better. I promise you will regret a 512MB purchase.

1GB 4870 would be an even better choice, but then again, an even better choice than that would be a GTX 280 1GB or 4870X2 or hell a Tri-SLI GTX 280 setup.