You should get nVidia card. Not because crap nV fanboys say, there are valid reasons for it:
1) AMD is dying company, there is a chance that next this time next year you won't be able to get new drivers for your card
2) AMD drivers for Linux are shit and Steam is getting ported to Linux
3) nVidia 660Ti series are more expensive but are better than AMD 7850/7870
4) AMD OpenGL drivers are really bad and there will be a number of good OpenGL games coming
Maybe in a month or so there will be some really good sale for 660Ti.
This is quite possibly the most stupid post I've read in 2012.
I can assume this only happens because you're talking about something you really don't know anything about.
1) AMD is not going under, at least not in the near future. Stop.
2) Who cares about Linux? Steam is being ported to Linux.. what does that mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
3) The GTX660TI is more expensive and the competitor to the HD7950 at the pricepoint, not the HD7850. Mind you, for $300 you could get a HD7950 and wipe the floor with a GTX660TI. It's not a good card at all for the price. With your argument, I could say the HD7970 is better than the GTX660TI, even though it's more expensive. See how stupid this sounds? OK.
4) AMD OpenGL drivers are quite fine. There's no difference between nV / AMD when it comes to OpenGL. What games are coming out that are notable using OGL?
None of your reasons are valid, it's typical nV fanboy bullshit.
BTW, I own 2 GTX680s in SLI -- Good luck with the AMD fanboy argument.
Well how will this perform though? Because I read some feedback on the 1GB and a lot of people said that they had trouble running games like BF3, Skyrim, etc., and more like these more recent games.
For Skyrim it could be useful, for BF3 it won't make much of a difference. BF3 will use as much vRam as you have as it uses a dynamic memory system. It will use as much as you have available. I have 2 GTX680s, and it uses around 1900mb (2GB cards) in a full 64player MP server. It looks exactly the same as it did on my 2 GTX480s (1.5GB cards).
Seeing the HD7870 for an extra $10 is a pretty good deal. I would go with the 2GB HD7870 I posted in the link before.