Overclocking
A little-known fact is that add-in card partners need to submit their retail products to Nvidia for validation under the Green Light program, which involves testing the board and issuing guidance on how far it should be overclocked. Nvidia, to a large degree, controls the maximum power target figure, used to deliver more juice to the card. Retail models specified with higher power target figures are usually indicative of good overclocking.
The Asus GTX 970 card has, for example a power target figure of about 130 per cent, meaning 30 more percent power can be fed into the circuitry. Our sample Palit, however, is limited to 111 per cent, and this has a direct impact on overclocking.
While other GTX 970s achieve an overclocked base clock of 1,300MHz-plus, Palit's meagre power target figure translates to a base core speed of 1,262MHz (rising to an average 1,430MHz under boost). Memory fares better, as the Samsung GDDR5 RAM scales up to 7,820MHz. Combining the two isn't quite enough to crash through the 11,000-mark barrier.
Cranking up the clocks offers around 10 per cent extra performance, enough to jump above all cards other than the also-overclocked Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming.