Looks like NVIDIA took their highly successful GK104 graphics processor and tried to reduce cost of all the other components as much as possible. We see a tiny PCB, low-cost cooler and conservative component selection on the reference design. Palit has addressed the cooler by putting their dual-fan JetStream cooler on the card, but they kept the reference PCB. Palit's GTX 670 provides excellent performance, exceeding AMD's much more expensive Radeon HD 7970, and also matching the bigger brother GTX 680.
Compared to the last generation GTX 570 we see twice the performance per Watt, at significantly reduced absolute power consumption numbers. GTX 670 will happily power a high-end gaming rig with a 400 W power supply, thanks to its efficient design. Typical gaming power draw for the Palit JetStream is around 160 Watts for the card alone, which should be no problem for any decent power supply. The lower power consumption also helps with cooling, which is improved some more by Palit's JetStream cooler. Unfortunately the dual fan cooler doesn't seem to be the best choice for the card, as the short PCB causes the second fan's air to not hit any PCB area. Nevertheless, we see a good reduction in temperatures, but noise levels are only improved in idle. Under load the card emits the same noise as the reference design, which is something that would benefit the card greatly, and is a bit dissapointing considering the Palit card uses a 2.5 slot cooler. Other non-reference cards released today work much better here, even with two slots.
Overclocking potential on Palit's card is the same as the reference design. Decent GPU overclocking that's are not far from what the GTX 680 offers. Only memory OC is a bit lower, which seems to be caused by the PCB design and lack of cooling for the memory chips.
Overall the Palit GTX 670 JetStream's major asset is its increased clock speed, which basically comes at a $20 price premium. Performance per Dollar considered, this makes the Palit card a slightly better buy, especially at higher resolutions. Given the $420 price, the card is a great choice in the current-generation high-end segment. AMD's HD 7950 costs $380 and is hopeless against the stock GTX 670 and loses big against Palit's GTX 670. The same for the $450 HD 7970, which can't compete on power and noise, too. These highly overclocked GTX 670 cards might even hurt sales of NVIDIA's own GTX 680, as they provide basically the same performance, but end up being much cheaper, and in stock.