After all the bullshit associated with the new consoles, I've decided to just stick with PC. I want to upgrade my video card from a GTX 580 to a GTX 770 so I can play all the new console games on PC maxed out/60 FPS at 1080p. I built my PC in early 2011 and I currently have an ASUS P67 pro Sandy Bridge MOBO, and an 850W corsair PS. Is this compatible with the GTX770? In other words, can I just stick the card in there and start playing? Would I lose a significant amount of performance by sticking with my current MOBO/CPU setup? I have the $$$ to goto Haswell, but if the FPS/speed difference is not considerable, then I won't bother. Thanks!

P.S> Not much of a PC guy, just use the thing to play games and that's it.

I don't know about the motherboard but the power supply is way more than fine.

@thornie: You should be good to go. PCI slot technology isn't the quickest advancing, so pretty much any motherboard is compatible. Your power supply will provide more than enough wattage. The only question is if your CPU will be a bottleneck, but if it's Sandybridge, you'll likely be just fine as long as it's an i5 or i7.

I just put a Zotac 770 in my old ass Micro ATX, Core i5 655k system. The dual core CPU bottlenecks the card sometimes, but performance increased MASSIVELY over the GTX470 I was rocking.

You should be fine as long as you have space inside your enclosure (the new cards are long, and it barely fit in my ATX Mid tower). Make sure you have 1x6 pin and 1x8 pin power cables on your PSU, and don't worry about PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0- there's no appreciable difference right now.

Know up front that you aren't going to MAX settings and maintain 1080p60. It depends on the game, but there's always going to be one or two settings that just murder GPU performance for people not running Titans in SLI. If you sacrifice one or two things (like DoF and draw distance on "high" instead of "ultra") you should be good to go.

Thanks guys, this has been real helpful. Yeah I have an i5-2500K. I've done some reading and the consensus seems that as long as I'm not going the SLI route the 2500K won't bottleneck performance. Now that I know I'll be OK with my current setup, I can spring the extra cash for the 4GB 770.

I know that there will always be some games that are just brutal... Metro 2033 for instance. But if I can play the vast majority of Xbox One/PS4 ports at 60fps/1080p, with most of the bells and whistles turned on, I'll be happy. The 770 seems to be the sweet spot for that. I think $500 for a new card is a no brainer when presented with $500 for a new Xbox. *shrugs* IMO at least.

I've been looking at a 770 too. Currently both the 770 and a PS4 are 449€ here, and the first year of PS4 doesn't seem to have any amazing exclusives so I'm leaning towards a new card.

@thornie: Good question. I'm probably going to pick up a 2GB 770 this holiday season instead of a next gen system (for now). I have a i5-2500k as well and was wondering the same thing regarding CPU bottlenecking. My mobo is an ASUS P68-Z, I believe, and thought the 770 would be fine there. Please update the thread on what you find after the install; my rig has a 570 and I'd like to know what performance boosts you discover...

@bonorbitz: Will do. The 4GB 770 seems sold out everywhere, so I guess I'll have to wait.

I think I'll definitely be getting a new console.. someday. Maybe when they drop to $299 in year or two. You're right @giefcookie, the exclusives are not blowing my mind right now on either platform. Also, with the new consoles essentially being PC's I think we'll be seeing a lot more cross platform support than last gen. Hell, even Dark Souls 2 is coming out on PC now.

A GTX770 most likely uses PCIe 3.0 while Sandy Bridge Motherboards have PCIe 2.0 . They do go back and forth though and the 2.0 standard is still fast enough for modern cards. A 580 to 770 upgrade is a pretty strong upgrade and it will actually use a little less power.

Thinking about getting a new card this year as well. Still haven't decided on which one to get though.

I basically have the same setup except with a corsair 750W PSU and bought an Asus DC GTX 770 and it works flawlessly. You can run most games 1080p but don't expect games like Crysis 3 to run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS.