Convince me not to buy a GTX 770

If you're replying to photonboy, he's saying that asking about distant future purchases is pointless, not high VRAM cards being pointless.

You can also pick up a 4GiB 290 for about the same price as a 4GiB 770.

Indeed, drivers are OK really, I only ever ran into issues when trying to Crossfire and then having to wait for drivers to support it for a title I wanted... Single card? No issue with drivers whatsoever.

550W PSU in my opinion is a bit stingy, should be 600 at least. But if PSU is decent it should make it. Top power consumption for 290 system is 470W.

Maxwell, Maxwell, Maxwell.

The GTX860 or GTX870 may be your best bet and they may be out in October. For example, if the GTX860 has 3GB and performs as good or better than a GTX770 for the same or less money it's worth the wait.

As for AMD, just be careful as many of the cards have problems. A lot more than NVidia, especially the R9-290X cards. It's interesting to note than an R9-290 should be about 94% on average (min 91%) as fast as a R9-290X at the same GPU frequency but there is a $100 difference in comparable quality ($360 vs $460 for cheapest).

Below I try to list cards of SIMILAR quality; I do not for example list the cheapest 4GB GTX770 model.

$310 - Asus GTX770 2GB
$370 - EVGA GTX770 SC 4GB
$400 - Asus R9-290 4GB
*I wanted to recommend a cheaper R9-290 but they all had issues including the Sapphire Tri-X. Sigh.

So crunch these numbers however you wish but the R9-290 is 17% faster than the GTX770 and about 29% more the cost for the cards I think are comparable quality.

WHAT CARD WOULD YOU BUY?

I'd wait for a GTX860 or GTX870 for sure. We do know the GTX880 should start at $500 and be about the same performance as a top-end GTX780Ti. It's not hard to imagine the GTX860 as a SLIGHTLY better value than a GTX770 but with 3GB probably.

*A bit long, but I think somewhat informative about the state of gaming in the near-future in terms of CPU and Graphics.

HIGHER BITRATE misinformation:

This is a spec that's really pointless to obsess over. Like many graphics card specifications what really matters is the GAME BENCHMARKS. I don't care if a card is made of tiny dancing monkeys just as long as it's fast (benchmarks), quiet, good quality, and supports any features I want (PhysX, Shadowplay, and in the future I'll buy a G-Sync monitor).

If your budget allows for $400 then a GTX870 card is probably going to be your ideal option though I can't predict pricing.

Also, I doubt the GTX860 will come with 4GB by default. I'm expecting 3GB. It's also plenty of VRAM for this performance level. Ignoring Skyrim heavily modified and Watch Dogs (which is getting fixed anyway for this) we still don't need more than 2GB but I do want to recommend 3GB for future proofing.

Unfortunately at present there are Pros and Cons between all three cards I mention. The GTX770 2GB is a great value but the amount of VRAM may be an issue in the future (hard to predict when though). The 4GB GTX770 solves that potential issue but the price is $60 more for a comparable card that puts it almost to the price of a similar quality R9-290 4GB card which performs higher thus I can't recommend a 4GB GTX770.

So again the OPTIMAL SOLUTION, assuming reasonable value, is a GTX860 3GB or GTX870 3GB/4GB. Don't get a GTX 870 4GB if the extra 1GB of VRAM is more than $30 extra because you'd likely never, ever use it.

Other:
We've heard rumors of an ARM CPU on specific Maxwell high-end cards for a long time, however it's no longer certain if this will happen, nor what benefits it would serve.

In your case it would be interesting to see if it can compensate for any CPU bottlenecks since you have an AMD CPU. I doubt that though. Nor do I think we'll even see this in 2014. Just thought I should mention it on the off chance you'd see a benefit.

(From what I understand, a game would have to be coded to use an ARM CPU on the graphics card for some threads rather than just go to the CPU. I'm not a programming expert, but there may be a way to tell a game to do that fairly simply though it must be coded into the game.

I think it's a very, very likely scenario at some point since we have APU's in consoles. Thus a graphics chip with a GPU/ARM CPU combo would be similar and then use the shared Video RAM in a similar method to the PS4. Basically a transition from the traditional method towards a single CPU/GPU chip and a single pool of shared memory.

We're also going to see STREAMING of textures for the main System to Video memory which helps reduce the amount of Video RAM required in a graphics card. I believe it's called "Shared Tiles" or similar and may only be supported on Windows 8.1.)

*MANTLE is the main reason I'd recommend an AMD card since it can help eliminate your AMD CPU bottleneck. It's uncertain how many games will release with Mantle, though DX12 solves the same types of issues and that functions on NVidia as well.

There are TWO ways in which Mantle/DX12 help solve your AMD CPU bottleneck:
1) Use more of your CPU cores (better multi-threading support)
2) Requires less CPU cycles for the same task

Summary:
While I'd wait for the new Maxwell cards no matter what, the decision isn't super easy. I lean towards NVIDIA overall. While I'd like Mantle to succeed I think DX12 will be the new choice for Windows since most game developers won't code for both Mantle and DX at the same time as it adds to the cost. Thus, this may only affect you for a couple games.

Not saying I disagree, but the OP is waiting for the new Maxwell release or at least solid information to make a better decision.

I want to stress again, that there are several R9-290 and R9-290X cards that have quality issues which I would guess to be heat related as similarly performing NVidia cards are more reliable on average. Not sure if AMD is pushing their GPU's too hot to keep benchmarks high but that's the only reason I can think of considering the card manufacturers use the same technology for AMD and NVidia cards.

I did extensive research, initially wanting to recommend the R9-290 cards, however I discovered that the ones without major issues tended to be $450+. For about $500 the EVGA GTX780 (ACX 967MHz base) is very, very impressive in terms of feedback from customers for quality.

*So it initially looks like the R9-290 and GTX780 are very similar but with a $100 price difference, however again the QUALITY issues make this an apples-to-oranges comparison.

**Look very closely at the customer feedbacks, especially looking at the PERCENTAGE of 1/5 and 2/5 scores which often point to failing cards or major noise issues.

EVGA GTX780 SC (free Watch Dogs; $465): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130918&cm_re=gtx780_evga-_-14-130-918-_-Product
*Wow, this GTX780 has 255 reviews with only 2% for 1/5 and 0% for 2/5 scores, 86% 5/5 scores. That is a HIGH QUALITY card people. It doesn't get better than this.

Sapphire R9-290 Vapor-X OC (games bundle is nice, but value at Steam pricing; $460) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202103&cm_re=r9-290-_-14-202-103-_-Product
*Not as many reviews (37) but this may be the best R9-290. However it costs roughly the same as the above GTX780.

Sapphire R9-290 Tri-X OC: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202103&cm_re=r9-290-_-14-202-103-_-Product
*Quality better than average for 290, however not nearly as good as the above GTX780. Cheaper though by roughly $100 but as I said the quality issues mean comparing apples-to-oranges for this card.

Asus R9-290: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121842&cm_re=r9-290-_-14-121-842-_-Product
*ASUS normally is in the top two IMO on average for many card in terms of quality so this is disappointing. Was it a bad run, or possibly a firmware issue? Not sure. I'm just pointing out that you need to CAREFULLY research your card choice.

Summary:
Okay, I'll shut up now. My main point is simply that many high-end AMD cards have issues whereas the above EVGA GTX780 is one of the best cards ever made in terms of quality.

Arguably the WORST thing you can get is COIL WHINE from a design that is unfixable. A card being a bit noisy in terms of fan noise isn't ideal though you should be able to modify the fan profile. Artifacts or complete death suck, but at least you have Warranties for that (though a major design flaw could easily see multiple RMA's).

Just look carefully at the 1/5 and 2/5 scores for any product and look for the common complaints such as noise issues, failures etc.

We all love dem pixels, what about a 280x?