EVGA GTX 670 FTW - Running hot?

Download and install Precision X and create a custom fans profile, its nothing to worry about I had to do the same. A fan profile is the only way to avoid throttling, now I do not go past 62 c on battlefield 3

Do you get the same temperature with stock fan speed?

It's normal. EVGA mostly uses reference coolers which tends to run hot, because it's a shrouded cooler. Shrouded coolers are great for small form factor cases, because the heat will go out of the back due to the shroud.

Aftermarket coolers like the Direct Cu II and Twin Frozr are "open" coolers, they get better temperatures but the heat from the GPU remains in the case, so decent airflow is required for such cooling.

My GTX 670 with the ASUS Direct CU II only gets about 60-65 celsius at full load.

Bottomline is, that you shouldn't worry because the thermal temperature is 97.4 celsius, so there is a long way to go.

Follow redeemer’s advice. Using the user-friendly Precision X, I set the fan to run at 75% when the temp reaches 68c. This will keep your temp down.

Yeah my ref gtx 670 get up to about 78C on a max load after playing Far Cry 3 for a while... That is also with max Vcore per the bios which is not that high. BF3 doesnt get nearly as hot

Keep in mind, Redeemer wasn't saying that you should do that, only you can do that if those temps bother you (at least I don't think so). 78C is perfectly within reason for that card. The reference design is meant to operate at temps up to 80C before they start ramping up the fans, and are perfectly safe up to 85C. They do it for a balance of heat and noise. Running the fan at 75% means a much noisier system.

^first throttling comes at 70c and the next at 80c but its only like 15mhz less on the core for each round of throttling.

Also the fan speed (at least on my cards bios) is locked at 80%, I dont hear it at all w headphones