Q: is it backward compatible for pci express 2.0 and is a 600 watt power supply enough to drive it?

Yes a motherboard with a pci express 2.0 will work with this card. I personally have a 650W power supply and it works just fine. The card at 100% load has a max TDP of 250W but unless your running it at full load, it wont be pulling more than 250W so you should be good.

Q: Will this card work with adobe premiere?

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with Adobe Premier nor am I an expert with video editing. However, I did a little research online and looked up the specs of Adobe Premier and did find this card is listed as one of the supported cards. You may want to check out the specs for yourself on the Adobe website.

Q: I realize that this card is compatible with PCI Express 3.0 x16. What I want to know is if you can plug it into a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot?

The card should work just fine in a 2.0 slotted motherboard. I personally own one of these bad boys myself and I have to say, you will not be disappointed. If anything, it will run at 2.0 speeds, but that shouldnt effect your graphical performance one bit.

Q: Can I install this in a mac book air? Is there an external graphics card I can plug and play of superior quality? How about cooling and power supply?

Frederick, If by external graphics solution, you are referring to the Mac book air that had a external video card, that was custom built. Then yes, with the caveat that I can't find a plug-and-play solution . It is possible, but you will have to build it yourself, buy the parts, install boot camp and windows 7 and 3rd party software, while getting 1/4 of the performance delivered with this card. If there is a plug and play solution out there, you're wasting your money buying a new video card with expected 1/4 of the performance using it this way. Also keep in mind that the shape/form factor of this video card is only meant to desktops and cannot be directly installed into a Mac book air. Hope this helps,

Q: Looking to replace my gtx570 with this but wonder if my i7 960 3.2ghz will bottleneck it? Hoping to not have to upgrade my CPU and motherboard if I can avoid it.

I'm running my GTX 780 card on a P7P55 WS SUPERCOMPUTER with an i7-860 CPU. I've seen some improvements, but knowing this card is PCIE 3.0 capable I knew I was not going to see the full optimization of the card in a PCIE 2.0 slot. However, I know that most cards don't truly take advantage of the full bandwidth of PCIE 2.0 anyway. I haven't seen any performance hits and have had good FPS in games over my prior set up of two GTX 560ti in SLI. This card alone is out performing what I got with both of those cards in SLI.

Q: Is this card a "reference" design pcb? I'm looking into watercooling it and need to know.

Yes. This was the primary reason I got it with the lifetime warranty a close second reason.

Question 1

Just as the pictures depict it, this GPU does have the titan cooler with the LED lighting up "Geforce GTX" on the side, right?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the LED lighting lights up green on the top edge of the card.  You can also control the LED lighting via the GeForce Experience software.  There are various settings for brightness and type of pulsing of the LEDs.

Question 2

What size PSU is required? I have a 500 watt modular.

Core i7 3770
16GB DDR3 1333mh ram

Accepted Answer

When determining if a PSU can run graphics card you should look at the +12V (volt) rail in particular. All modern cards get most of their power from this voltage source.

A GTX 780 is capable of pulling a maximum 268 watts, aka 22.3A (amps) on the 12V rail. Based on this I would recommend 35+ amps on the 12V rail to be safe (remember this power rail is also powering other components in your PC).

There is a slim chance you could run this with as little as 25 amps on the 12v rail but no sane PC builder would recommend this as it would likely cause a crash from lack of power as soon as you started up a game.

TL;DR,  Look at +12V rail, if <26A, it will probably crash in game, <30A you would be ok with NO overclocking, over 35A plenty good.

P.S. Some people may or may not agree with me. I prefer to stray on the safe side with my estimates when it comes to other people's PCs.

Question 3

is it backward compatible for pci express 2.0 and is a 600 watt power supply enough to drive it?

Accepted Answer

Yes a motherboard with a pci express 2.0 will work with this card. I personally have a 650W power supply and it works just fine. The card at 100% load has a max TDP of 250W but unless your running it at full load, it wont be pulling more than 250W so you should be good.

Question 4

Will this card work with adobe premiere?

Accepted Answer

I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with Adobe Premier nor am I an expert with video editing.  However, I did a little research online and looked up the specs of Adobe Premier and did find this card is listed as one of the supported cards.  You may want to check out the specs for yourself on the Adobe website.

Question 5

I realize that this card is compatible with PCI Express 3.0 x16. What I want to know is if you can plug it into a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot?

Accepted Answer

The card should work just fine in a 2.0 slotted motherboard. I personally own one of these bad boys myself and I have to say, you will not be disappointed. If anything, it will run at 2.0 speeds, but that shouldnt effect your graphical performance one bit.

Question 6

Can I install this in a mac book air? Is there an external graphics card I can plug and play of superior quality? How about cooling and power supply?

Accepted Answer

Frederick,
If by external graphics solution, you are referring to the Mac book air that had a external video card, that was custom built.
Then yes, with the caveat that I can't find a plug-and-play solution .  It is possible, but you will have to build it yourself, buy the parts, install boot camp and windows 7 and 3rd party software, while getting 1/4 of the performance delivered with this card.  If there is a plug and play solution out there, you're wasting your money buying a new video card with expected 1/4 of the performance using it this way.
Also keep in mind that the shape/form factor of this video card is only meant to desktops and cannot be directly installed into a Mac book air.
Hope this helps,

Question 7

Looking to replace my gtx570 with this but wonder if my i7 960 3.2ghz will bottleneck it?  Hoping to not have to upgrade my CPU and motherboard if I can avoid it.

Accepted Answer

I'm running my GTX 780 card on a P7P55 WS SUPERCOMPUTER with an i7-860 CPU.  I've seen some improvements, but knowing this card is PCIE 3.0 capable I knew I was not going to see the full optimization of the card in a PCIE 2.0 slot. However, I know that most cards don't truly take advantage of the full bandwidth of PCIE 2.0 anyway.  I haven't seen any performance hits and have had good FPS in games over my prior set up of two GTX 560ti in SLI. This card alone is out performing what I got with both of those cards in SLI.

Question 8

Is this card a "reference" design pcb? I'm looking into watercooling it and need to know.

Accepted Answer

Yes. This was the primary reason I got it with the lifetime warranty a close second reason.

Questions & Answers