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When I was taking the GRE I was told that as long as its over 80% no one cares, and that by far the most important aspect of the application is the recommendation letters. I was also advised to get letters from "famous" profs rather than from postdocs. From what I heard these letters are supposed to say "happyentropy is better than A,B,C and almost as good as X,Y,Z" where A,B,C,X,Y,Z are students the prof has worked with in the past who have gone to comparable grad and/or became respected mathematicians...
Most domestic applicants to top programs get letters like this either from profs at their undergrad school or ones who supervised their REU's.
In particular it helps if your recommender actually personally contacts your potential advisors at the schools you're applying to (I think that and good grades were the only things going for me when I applied...).
If you're an international applicant from a school/country with faculty who are not known in the US it is more difficult, and their probably have to rely more heavily on your GRE math subject scores (for example at Michigan State the admissions chair said that the minimal expected GRE is 45% for domestic and 80%(!) for international applicants).
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