GTX 770 Compatibility

[congo87]

I bought a GTX 770 4GB a couple of months ago. A friend of mine was selling for a good price, so I snagged it. Problem is it was not compatible with my current rig. Well, I decided to upgrade. I was looking at the LGA 2011-3 socket motherboards (specifically, I am looking at msi x99s mpower). I wanted to ask if the video card is compatible with the motherboard? MSI wrote that the motherboard only supports GTX 770 2GB. Does this mean that only 2GB of the memory will be available? Or is the card not supported at all?

I know this may seem a silly question, but I just wanted to ask someone else before shelling out the cash for the motherboard. If it is not compatible, can you recommend a motherboard that is compatible with a GTX 770 4GB.

Thanks,
Congo

 

[coolcole01]

it is absolutely compatible

 

[congo87]

Thanks. I figured it was.

 

[photonboy]

1) What motherboard do you have now?
I ask because I'm not aware of many motherboards that don't support a PCIe x16 graphics card.

2) Why 2011-3?
I don't know your plan, but it can be a lot more EXPENSIVE to upgrade. If it's for GAMING then I don't recommend it as a good 1150 + i5-4670K is a great way to go there.

XEON CPU's don't always make sense either especially since most (all?) can't be overclocked. The i5-4690K is still the CPU I reference for performance since a light overclock with no change to voltage is about 4.3GHz.

Unless you're converting video or have some other demanding task that benefits from a SIX or EIGHT core CPU like the 6-core i7-5820K (great CPU for $370) then again I'd stay with 1150.

(If you think that you are "future proofing" with six cores for gaming then you're probably going to be disappointed. DX12 for example is going to allow more cores to be utilized and will also use more efficient coding at the same time so it's likely a good i5/i7 CPU will last at least 5 years until games benefit much from a faster CPU)

3) Support.
In general, all you need is a motherboard with a "x16 PCIe slot" and ensure you have 64-bit Windows 7, 8 (or upcoming W10).

If upgrading I suggest considering a motherboard that has "UEFI SECURE" support. Not all UEFI boards have this feature. It basically makes it nearly impossible for viruses to infect you at boot time (when your antivirus software hasn't kicked in yet)

4) Motherboard company:
All companies have good and bad boards but in general I recommend in this order based on quality and software support:
a) Asus or Gigabyte
b) Asrock
c) MSI