Palit GeForce GTX 680 JETSTREAM 2048MB Pro Reviews

Clearly we’re impressed with the price point that Palit has been able to hit with the GTX 680 2GB JetStream - at £400 it’s essentially exactly the same price as a stock card from a different manufacturer. This means that if you were looking at getting a GTX 680 2GB, the JetStream has become an almost de-facto choice thanks to its overclock and custom cooler. The only reason not to opt for it would be if the triple slot cooler was an issue in your build. Things are slightly less clear cut when you view the wider market however, as the JetStream didn’t comprehensively outperform the HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition. We’re well aware of course that this particular card is very hard to pick up, but it does provide a decent proxy for a factory overclocked HD 7970 3GB in our graphs, of which there are plenty around, many of which hit the 1050GHz boost clock speed of the GHz Edition. These cards can be had for around £360 - a significant chunk of cash less than the JetStream (and any other GTX 680 2GB for that matter). What we’ll end by saying then, is that while we’re enamoured by the JetStream, we can’t recommend it unconditionally, unless of course you specifically want a top end card from the green side of the fence. For everyone else, it’s a tight call which will ultimately be decided by whether you think the superior efficiency, overclocking headroom and cooler of the JetStream is worth the £40 or so extra you’ll pay for it over a pre-overclocked HD 7970 3GB. If you've made up your mind to opt for a GTX 680 2GB though, then the JetStream is an easy choice.

Palit's GeForce GTX 680 JetStream uses a custom triple fan cooler and a custom PCB design. It looks like both have been optimized for cost reduction, which enables the company to offer the card at the same price as the reference design. Thanks to an overclock of 80 MHz out of the box, we see an about 5% performance increase over the NVIDIA reference design. Usually higher clocks mean higher power consumption, not so with the Palit GTX 680 JetStream. In our testing the card consumes about 10 Watts less under load than the NVIDIA reference design which is running slower clocks. This is evidence that Palit made the right choices when redesigning the PCB of the GTX 680. Palit's excellent fan profile that seems to be carefully matched to the requirements of the card and the capabilities of the cooler provides great noise levels. In idle the card is actually one of the quietest cards I ever reviewed. Under load the card is much quieter than the reference design, too. Palit's choice of triple fan, 2.5 slot design certainly paid off in this area. If you choose to use this card in an SLI system, ensure you have enough space between slots. Overall the Palit GTX 680 JetStream is a solid improvement over NVIDIA's reference design. Since it comes at no price increased compared to stock cards, I can easily recommend this card to all users who are looking for a GTX 680, yet are not willing to spend too much on custom overclocked versions.

Standalone or in SLI, our thoughts on the new Palit JetStream GTX 680 4GB are the same. If you think that 2GB of memory on your GTX 680 isn't enough, then make the leap over to the 4GB version offering from Palit. Of course compared to the reference design, it's not just the extra memory that comes in to play here. We've also got the awesome cooler that does wonders on the GPU and seems to give the video card a bit more breathing room when it comes to the Dynamic Overclocking side of things. There's little to dislike about the Palit JetStream GTX 680 4GB offering and even less to dislike when you throw a second into the mix. If you're serious about your gaming and you're going to be looking at gaming in Surround Vision or just 2560 x 1600 with the AA and AF detail cranked right up, then the 4GB offering is going to be something you probably want. Of course if you're interested in saving some pennies and you're impressed with what the 2GB offerings did, then the Palit JetStream GTX 680 2GB card is also a great option and comes out a little faster out of the box thanks to the pre-overclock on offer from it, something that Palit skipped on the 4GB card.