The thing is Deepbit pays out proportionally by the hash rate. So if my hash rate gets reported 500 MH/s below my real hash rate of 1 GH/s, then I'll only receive a proportional payout equal to someone hashing at 500MH/s.
No, that's not how it works. DeepBit pays for the proportion of shares you submit to the pool during the round. The hash rate that's displayed is just for display purposes and is an approximation. The pool does not know your actual hashrate, it just sees the shares you are submitting. Since your share submissions vary (you don't find shares at constant intervals), so does the rate DeepBit displays.
I'm doing about 9500 MH/s right now. Deepbit is showing about 8900 MH/s right now. Sometimes it's showing closer to 10k MH/s.