Upgrade Accomplished!

Lately, as beautiful new releases (like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey) come rolling out, I've made the decision to take a glance at the system specs and see if my four year old PC is up to snuff.  Sadly, reality started to sink in that my graphics card was no longer enough to land me firmly in the "recommended" specs, but mostly found me planted in the "minimum" section.  This had become apparent to me as I played a few newer titles--Dishonored 2 defaulted to the "very low" setting and I hadn't realized that The Witcher 3 was defaulting to "low."  I decided that it was time to take the plunge and look into upgrading my graphics card.

If you're someone with a decent amount of technical knowhow, the thought of someone having anxiety over something as simple as swapping out a graphics card is probably laughable.  To someone like me, with a very small amount of technical knowhow, this task required many hours of research, shopping, and teeth gnashing.  There are many aspects to consider--do I have the right slots on my MOBO?  Is my power supply enough for a beefier card?  Will it fit inside my case?  Those technical questions could be answered with a bit of Googling, but there still remained the financial questions.  Buying a new component is intimidating to the wallet of someone with a moderate income and graphics card prices were insanely high about a year ago.  Prices have definitely come down, but there's still the uncertainty that if a card didn't work, I could be out of a good chunk of change.

In ordering my new card, I decided that ease of return was important.  I didn't want to get stuck with a $300 card that didn't work.  Newegg offers a magical array of beautiful cards, but they don't offer refunds on graphics cards and only offer replacements.  Knowing this, I decided that it would probably be a better idea to buy from a big box store that offers full refunds.  This was for the best because I had once tried to upgrade a graphics card only to find that my MOBO wouldn't support the newer card that I had bought.  Fortunately, Best Buy has a very easy return policy and I was able to get the full amount of my purchase refunded (even with the packaging being opened).

Sparkly!

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a brand, spankin' new graphics card.  My old card was an R9 290 and it was a great card--I had no problems and most games worked well at lower settings.  One of the major decisions was the possibility of switching from an AMD card to an NVIDIA one.  It really seemed like there was a much bigger selection of NVIDIA cards and I had some definite thoughts about making the switch.  In the end I decided that with my level of non-technical skills that it would be better to stick with an AMD card (I know nothing about the whole AMD vs. NVIDIA battle--I'm sure each brand has its own pros and cons).  Now, I'm the proud owner of an RX 580 and am enjoying the smooth as butter graphics.

I can feel a mild flush of pride at my ability to unscrew a couple of screws, slide a card out, and then screw in the new card.  This is the first time I've successfully upgraded a PC and I'm excited.  My new card came as part of a promotion where you get three free games with purchase--I received Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey, Star Control: Origins, and Strange Brigade.  I hadn't heard of two of those games and I've never played an Assassin's Creed game before.  I let them download overnight and have been giving them a whirl.  I started with Strange Brigade, which is a third person shooter that features Co-Op play.  The story has a very Indiana Jones-esque feeling and is set in the 1930's.  I've spent a couple of hours playing and I'm finding that it's actually fun.  I plan to spend some time playing the other two games after I've finished Strange Brigade.

It seems to be a good time to look into buying a new graphics card as prices have fallen from the insane highs of the cryptomining days.  If you take the plunge, good luck!  I did it and I'm not looking back :)