Yeah if you're using Windows - reason being if I'm not mistaken in Linux performance also suffers if you lower the mem clock, no?
But yeah, lowering the mem clock works for me in Windows and it does lower power consumption and temps. Not sure about "WAY" down though. I does cut quite a bit of "amps" off the VRMs powering the memory especially for me with my 4 GB of VRAM. I'd say it probably lowers power usage by 30 watts easily.
If you are feeling really frisky, the VTT voltages can be lowered via BIOS on a 5970.