I’m a fan of Aiken but don’t think the greens are in the same conversation as Palmetto.
You speaking design or conditioning?
One I would agree, the other I would argue.
Jon-Palmetto’s greens and surrounds are more compelling for me without any consideration given to conditioning.
I'm also a big fan of AGC, and love playing there.
The only possible weakness I see at AGC,for the low percentage of low handicappers in the world, is a lack of variety in par 4 lengths(plenty of cool short par 4's for sure, but a lot of them )
Aiken has 5 REALLY good par 3's, and plenty of other very good holes.
All three par 5's are good(10 is really good), it's just that two of them play like mid length par 4's(so I guess that helps the par 4 varety
but the greens sites at all three are really compelling, regardless of the assigned par.
It's a really, really interesting golf course,with many cool details and I like the fact that it doesn't need or have 5 sets of tees(at least I hope it doesn't)
EDIT-upon reflection,
perhaps the 5 varied par 3's, with a range from roughly 150-220ish, coupled with the mid/short iron approaches on two of the par 5's, and two other mid range par 4's, compensate for the many short par 4's by still calling for a varied length of iron approaches.
I think the two courses compliment each other nicely, and make for a perfect 36 hole day.