Pros: Factory Overclock touching GTX680 performance, Price, LED illuminate cooling, Flashy look, Better performing cooler
Cons: Loud, Cooler is not as good as the Windforce3, Does not overclock well
My first review here, so please bear with my immaturity. 
I used to have couple of HD6950's in CF and they gave all sorts of problems. I ditched them for this Palit GTX670 Jetstream edition card.
This card is slower than the 6950 CF in benchmarks, but gameplay is much much smoother.
The main reason I got this was because it came with a custom cooler and the card with the best cooler (i.e. Gigabyte GTX670 Windforce) was substantially more expensive than this AND because it came with a guaranteed factory overclock of 1006MHz core (1085MHz boost) and 1527MHz memory. At those specs, it performed on par with a stock GTX680. (I wonder what those extra shaders are doing really.) I am unlucky with when it comes to overclocking video cards so I always try to go with factory overclocked cards.
It could be my luck, but the card does not really overclock well. I only managed to get to 1155MHz boost (Kepler boost must be taking it a tad higher though.) without crashing the drivers. I can hit higher with 3DMark11 and Heaven, but games - Crysis 2 especially - didn't like higher clocks. (read more here.)
Then there is the cooler. It looks good and usually keeps the temps at 70C max (it is summer now and the room temperature exceeds 30C so hits close to 80C). Only thing is, it is loud. It would run much cooler if I turned up the RPM manually, but if I do that, even the headset wouldn't keep the noise out. At stock fan profile, it doesn't get that loud; but it is noticeable. At 70% it is very loud.
The fans are LED illuminated so it adds a nice touch. It is not bright. Just about right. But the light would fluctuate due to the placement of it when the fans are spinning.
Other than the loudness of the fan and the not-so-good overclocking (again, it could be my bad luck), it is a stellar performer. I play BF3 with 60fps (adaptive V-sync ON with 304.79 beta drivers) and it hardly drops below that. It is much much smoother than my old HD6950's even when they were running at 75fps. (I know Crossfire related microstuttering is to be blamed.)
That's it. I hope you enjoyed the review.
If you want an indept review, visit this review.
I used to have couple of HD6950's in CF and they gave all sorts of problems. I ditched them for this Palit GTX670 Jetstream edition card.
This card is slower than the 6950 CF in benchmarks, but gameplay is much much smoother.
The main reason I got this was because it came with a custom cooler and the card with the best cooler (i.e. Gigabyte GTX670 Windforce) was substantially more expensive than this AND because it came with a guaranteed factory overclock of 1006MHz core (1085MHz boost) and 1527MHz memory. At those specs, it performed on par with a stock GTX680. (I wonder what those extra shaders are doing really.) I am unlucky with when it comes to overclocking video cards so I always try to go with factory overclocked cards.
It could be my luck, but the card does not really overclock well. I only managed to get to 1155MHz boost (Kepler boost must be taking it a tad higher though.) without crashing the drivers. I can hit higher with 3DMark11 and Heaven, but games - Crysis 2 especially - didn't like higher clocks. (read more here.)
Then there is the cooler. It looks good and usually keeps the temps at 70C max (it is summer now and the room temperature exceeds 30C so hits close to 80C). Only thing is, it is loud. It would run much cooler if I turned up the RPM manually, but if I do that, even the headset wouldn't keep the noise out. At stock fan profile, it doesn't get that loud; but it is noticeable. At 70% it is very loud.
The fans are LED illuminated so it adds a nice touch. It is not bright. Just about right. But the light would fluctuate due to the placement of it when the fans are spinning.
Other than the loudness of the fan and the not-so-good overclocking (again, it could be my bad luck), it is a stellar performer. I play BF3 with 60fps (adaptive V-sync ON with 304.79 beta drivers) and it hardly drops below that. It is much much smoother than my old HD6950's even when they were running at 75fps. (I know Crossfire related microstuttering is to be blamed.)
That's it. I hope you enjoyed the review.
If you want an indept review, visit this review.
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