I upgraded from an overclocked GTX 460, with which I could achieve playable framerates on highest settings in all games other than Crysis 3 and parts of Metro: Last Light. I wanted to wait long enough to buy a new graphics card so that I am not compromising visual fidelity in upcoming games, and yet I am not needlessly buying an incrementally better piece of hardware (the same logical I followed when I went from an 8800GT to my 460). This card is more expensive than any that I have had in the past, but the step up in power was significant enough that I decided to buy it. Gigabyte is a very reputable brand, and its no coincidence that it is one of the most popular third party 770's out there because of the balance of build quality and cooler design, factory overclocked tuning, and 4GB of video ram. All of this, combined with the price tag which is considerably smaller than similar EVGA models, are the reasons why so many people such as myself dished out the $450. Obviously its better to buy the 4GB version because it is a fact that multiplatform games designed to take advantage of PS4 architecture will require much more high speed memory. People who say "only get the 4GB variant for multiscreen, high resolution gaming" don't know what they're saying; paying $50 extra for something that will be necessary in the very near future is only logical.

Installation was no problem. The 6-pin connectors I used for my old card had 2 extra pins to the side, making them 8-pin connectors. I did not need to add adapters or change chords in my power supply. The card came with plastic protectors on the portion that goes into the PCI slot, and on the HDMI/DVI inputs. A single screw holds the card firmly in place. Upon booting my computer for the first time with this video card, there were no noises or issues. Windows recognized it, and installed the latest saved driver from Nvidia.

I have been using this 770 for 3 days now with my i5 3570k and 16GB Ram. Battlefield 3 looks spectacular running at 60 fps (something I could not witness up until now). Crysis 3 runs smoothly at the highest settings in 1080p. Some of the most impressive visuals I have been enjoying are in the form of modded GTA IV, with Icenhancer and HD textures (all settings and sliders maxed). I can't wait to play The Witcher 3, Battlefield 4 and Watch Dogs: games that alongside Crysis 3, harness the full potential of this powerful piece of hardware.

The only disappointment I have is that Shadow play, a program which makes use of the Kepler built in HD video encoder for video capture, has not been released despite Nvidia promising it will be available by now.

I've had this card a little over a month and so far I have zero complaints. All the specs aside, the card is a behemoth. Both physically and in capability. If you're worried the 3 fans will be noisy, don't be; they're silent.. even under load. At least I don't hear them over whatever game I'm playing. But even with the side cover off my HAF922, I can't hear them over the rest of the fans. So far everything I've run on it has run at max settings and 1920x1080 without a problem. I'm not into overclocking and honestly haven't seen a reason to, but then again I'm not as much a hard-core gamer as some. I was building a new PC and wanted the latest without spending over $400, and this board came out just at the right time.

This card is very powerful for the money, but it has some issues. Part of the trouble is software-based; Nvidia's drivers cause instability when auto-updating on Windows 10, but once I figured out how to fix the drivers (using Display Driver Uninstaller in Safe Mode and re-installing the official Nvidia drivers) it has stopped crashing and blue-screening. It is now a very reliable video card; if only Nvidia was on top of this issue!

The other problem is with the noise level. This video card has a very loud fan. I tried measuring the noise level from the computer overall and got 60 decibels. Admittedly this measurement was probably inaccurate coming from a PC mic, but the difference with and without the video card is night and day. Apparently the fans are locked in the hardware to a minimum speed of 41%, which I was unable to reduce by flashing the EVGA BIOS (which is supposed to lower the minimum to 25%) or even by modifying the firmware and flashing. As it is now, the sound from the fans on this video card are louder than any other object in my apartment.

Fortunately, the video card itself is very powerful, running The Witcher 3, Battlefield 4, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Overwatch on Medium to High settings in 1920x1080 at 50-60 fps. The fan issue may be specific to my card, as most reviews rate it as being very quiet.