How to Upgrade a Graphics Card

The process of upgrading your graphics card is really the endpoint of a larger question, and that question is the real story of a typical card upgrade. The actual physical swap-out is an anti-climax. Anyone comfortable with a screwdriver can do it in a few minutes.

After all, all you have to do is uninstall your old card's driver and unplug your old card (assuming you have one installed at all), plug in a new one, wire up any power connectors, install that card's driver, connect your monitor, and enjoy. PCI Express slots have been standardized for ages. The only real wrinkle might be the power supply and cabling, which we'll get into below, and the actual card fitment, which you can plan for in advance. Generally, it's trivial stuff.

The Whys of a Video Card Upgrade

If you have ever upgraded a video card, though, you know that concentrating on the nuts-and-bolts part of the process alone misses the point. It's what leads up to the upgrade that's the thornier bit. It all really begins with a much earlier question: Do I need a new graphics card? Answering this can be tricky, and it depends more on your software than your hardware.

Consider why you feel you need an upgrade. Let's say your full-screen Netflix playback is prone to being pixelated or commonly skips frames, delivering a jittery viewing experience. Both symptoms might sound like the fault of slow video and/or graphics processing, and since those tasks are typically handled by the graphics processing unit (GPU), the GPU must be the culprit, right?

Wrong. The fault more likely lies with a lack of internet and/or local-network bandwidth, with your system not getting enough video data fast enough to generate optimally detailed, full-frame-rate playback. Modern GPUs, even the type built into CPUs (known as integrated graphics processors, or IGPs), have more than enough graphics horsepower to handle Netflix and its streaming ilk.

How could you have tested this? Download some content to your system and play it from your system's internal storage rather than streaming it. If the problem vanishes, you know it's a network-bandwidth issue, not your GPU.

Other common bottlenecks include the CPU, the system memory (RAM), and perhaps the storage, especially if that storage is nearly full or is a platter-based hard drive. The trick lies in making sure your GPU is the primary problem in the first place.

How to Know Your GPU Is the Problem

First, you may want to benchmark-test your GPU to quantify exactly how slow (or not!) it really is.

Gamers are the folks who have the easiest time feeling a slow GPU. Because most 3D games are so GPU-dependent, the resolution you want to play at, as well as the graphical detail settings (usually along a continuum of low, medium, high, and extreme), are a crucial part of the playing experience. To learn more about these graphics functions and how graphics cards support them differently, see our roundup of the best graphics cards.

Beyond something "feeling off" in a given game, though, your quantitative measure will be frame rates or proprietary scores generated by benchmarking software. Before you get into testing, though, look at some more fundamental stuff, starting with specifications for the games you actually play.

A quick check of the game publisher's system requirements for a given game should provide minimum (and possibly recommended) graphics guidelines. For example, current bestseller Dragon Age: Inquisition is a lightweight game; it notes a minimum graphics requirement of 512MB of graphics memory on an AMD Radeon HD 4870 or Nvidia GeForce 8800 or better, but recommends 2GB on AMD's Radeon HD 7870 or Radeon R9 270 or Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660, or a better card. Those are all old video cards, and any modern video card should make mincemeat of this game.

But take a more recent AAA title, such as the newest Call of Duty, and you may see a modern card (maybe even a modern card further up the ladder than the card you own) as the minimum or recommended card to use. There, the tradeoffs will be hazier. Playing at a lower resolution or detail setting may improve the experience, but where to draw the line? And how to compare the performance of what you might buy against what you already have? That's where objective benchmarking comes in.

The Basics: How to Test Your Graphics Card

In this context, benchmarking means running a series of software operations to determine how long it takes a given hardware configuration to complete those operations, or what kind of results it can generate in a given span of time. You see benchmark results in a broad array of hardware-component reviews, and PC enthusiasts, in particular, hoover up benchmark results as a means to compare products. Some users even enjoy benchmarking their hardware for bragging rights, especially when it comes to overclocking.

For our purposes, benchmarking can serve both for comparisons between graphics cards (a way to help guide a buying decision), and as a method for telling if a graphics card's performance is a problem over time. One of the best and most widely recognized of the graphics-testing tools is UL's 3DMark.

The Basic Edition of 3DMark is free, while the Advanced Edition—which includes many more tests and tools—normally sells for $29.99. (At the time of this writing, UL was running a sale on Advanced Edition for only $4.49, and we see frequent Steam sales on it, so keep an eye out.) You can learn more from the Advanced Edition, but even the free software will give you an overall score, a graphics score for each test, and a frame-per-second (fps) result for each test.

3DMark Basic Edition is downloadable only through Steam and is called 3DMark Demo. It's super-easy to run; you install the suite, choose your subtest, and click Run. When you're ready to benchmark, you should reboot, close any open programs, and not mess with the PC while it's testing.

3DMark contains lots of subtests. For discrete graphics-card testing, we are partial to the 3DMark Fire Strike subtest. The frame-rate number it generates can be particularly helpful, as anything under 30fps is regarded as being subpar and prone to dropping frames, thus yielding a "jerky" animation experience. That said, Fire Strike is just one test, and not indicative of all games—not by a long shot. Attaining 30fps in this test doesn't guarantee 30fps in any other given game. It's better used as a comparative measure. The Graphics Score, too, is a handy number for comparing one card's muscle relative to another's.

For a totally free alternative, try Unigine's benchmarks. Various versions of Unigine's Heaven test have been mainstays for graphics enthusiasts for a decade, but 2013's Valley test and the most recent Unigine offering, the VR-friendly test Superposition, are excellent updates.

In all cases, the idea remains similar to 3DMark. You load the program, pick your test parameters, let it run, and receive a score along with minimum, maximum, and average frame-rate values. Note that Superposition adds results for GPU temperature and utilization, which can also be useful.

Regarding which parameters to choose, you may want to start with the defaults. Again, consult our best graphics card article for help with what some of the parameters mean. (See also the detailed discussion in our How We Test Graphics Cards article.)

No matter what, though, make sure you keep the exact same parameters selected across your tests, otherwise you won't be able to make meaningful comparisons between graphics cards, or between "before" and "after" results. You'll always want to test at the same resolution, and using the same graphics presets or granular settings, if you want a given set of numbers to be comparable. If you vary your settings from card to card, the numbers will be meaningless.

Indeed, testing your card using the same settings we use in our video-card reviews can be telling. You can see relative to recent cards how the card that you own shapes up. (After all, you can't test a new card in your PC unless you buy it or borrow a sample from someone.) You can also test to see if, when, and with which settings your current card can exceed an average of 30fps, but again: Know that getting 30fps in a given bench test or game doesn't guarantee the same in any other given game. Comparative measures will tell you more.

If you own a library of PC games, also know that some of them have built-in benchmark routines. We use some of these in our own tests of cards. (Again, see our "how we test" article.) Key recent game series that include easy-to-run built-in benchmark routines include the Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Metro, and Hitman series. You play a short, canned scene using the in-game testing utility, and the game reports back a frame-rate score based on the resolution and detail settings you designate.

From the numbers you generate from these tests, you'll be in an informed position to judge whether you need an upgrade. If so, then it's time to pick your card. I recommend our article series that rounds up our favorite card models for compact PCs, for 1080p (low-end) gaming, and for 4K (high-end) gaming.

Got your new card in hand? Good. Let's get you accelerated!

Again, it might seem like upgrading is a matter of plug and play, but it's not. Even before you get to the part where you plug it in, load the drivers, and start enjoying, there are a few things to think about.

The Power Supply: Do You Have Enough Juice?

While integrated graphics sip power from the CPU, many discrete PCI Express graphics cards can guzzle so much energy from your PC's power supply that it may not be able to support its operation. Before you run into that problem, you can measure how much energy your PC uses.

A conventional desktop PC can consume anywhere from 60 watts to 600 watts, but actual power consumption is largely based on hardware configuration and your software load. For instance, a recent demanding game pushing frames at 4K resolution will demand much higher energy consumption than the PC sitting idle at a Microsoft Word document.

When measuring power consumption, you want to base your power-need estimates on peak use rather than averages, and leave enough overhead for load spikes. I'm fond of my Kill A Watt power meter ($20) for this task, but any wall-plug power meter should do.

Let's say you run a power monitor on your system, which has an old AMD Radeon R7 260X card in it. Under peak load, you find that the system draws about 380 watts. Searching reveals a peak draw from this card of about 220 watts.

Then you read our roundup of video cards for 4K gaming and decide to go with one of our Editors' Choice cards, the Zotac GeForce RTX 2060 Amp. Zotac specifies that card at a maximum power draw of 170 watts, even though online reviews put the number closer to 185 watts. If we allow some wiggle room for mild overclocking, odds are good that we won't be increasing power consumption over the existing Radeon R7 260X card. Good news.

Now, if we'd started with no video card at all (we were running integrated graphics) and a peak starting consumption of, say, 170 watts, adding the GeForce RTX 2060 Amp could more than double our energy draw. If the PC's original manufacturer had installed a 300-watt power supply, under the rightful assumption that this would be more than enough for the system's default configuration, our upgrade could overtax the power supply at times and require an upgraded part there, as well.

Install a New Power Supply

For a 380-watt draw, we'd recommend at least a 500-watt power supply for safety's sake. A new power supply installation isn't rocket science, but it's a time-consuming upgrade, and you'll want to make sure to get a new supply with the same physical fitment.

Most new power supplies in ordinary-size tower PCs use the "ATX" power-supply form factor, which governs the size and shape of the power supply. You'll just want to be sure, if the new ATX power supply you get is longer front to back, that your PC's case has the extra clearance for it. In rare cases (mostly business PCs or very compact systems) a desktop may have a proprietary, non-ATX power supply or use a smaller form factor, called SFX. In those cases, you'll want to check with the system maker's support personnel for your upgrade options, though you can get aftermarket SFX supplies easily, if you're sure you have one.

Beyond the wattage is the issue of the physical power connectors that you need to run from the power supply to the new video card. Before you even conceive of a card upgrade, check out the required power-supply connectors on your new graphics card. The lowest-end cards might not have any power connectors, with the card able to draw its needed power through the PCI Express slot. More likely, though, your new card will have a six-pin or an eight-pin power socket on its top edge—or two of them, which can be of either type.

If your power supply doesn't include matching power leads that natively fit these sockets, check to see if your power supply or new graphics card came with adapters that convert, say, four-wire Molex connectors to them. That said, not having the appropriate cables is a pretty safe indication that your power supply is not up to the task of powering the card. A typical "6+2" graphics power connector from your power supply is pictured above. (More about those in a moment.)

Red flag: If you own a pre-built PC that was never home to a video card in the first place, the original system maker probably put in a power supply that's only adequate to run a system without a proper video card. You'll have to factor in a power-supply upgrade, as well.

Out With the Old Graphics Card...

We'll assume here that your power supply is up to snuff. Once you've got your power situation sorted out and your new card ready to install, it's time to delete your old graphics drivers. Just in case you don't know what graphics adapter your system uses, you can look it up in Control Panel's Device Manager, listed under "Display adapters."

This will tell you which GPU manufacturer you're dealing with. You can then look up uninstallation instructions from the manufacturer's website. For this, see the relevant uninstall page from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia.

With the driver deleted, now shut down the PC. Unplug the wall-power cable from the power supply, then go through the motions of turning the system on. It won't power up, of course, but it will discharge any residual power in the system. Unplug all other cables connected to the PC's rear panel. Using a Philips screwdriver, if needed, remove the system's side panel to expose the interior.

If you currently have a discrete graphics card installed, identify it from any other cards installed. (It'll be the one the monitor was plugged into.) Unplug any power leads from the card running between it and the PC's power supply. (Squeeze and pull the connector to release.) Then use your screwdriver to remove any screws securing the card to the case's frame.

The motherboard's PCI Express slot holding the card in place likely has a plastic locking mechanism at its front end (opposite from the end with the monitor ports).

You'll need to press on the lock either downward or laterally to release the card from the PCI Express slot. (Different levers with different designs can require a push in one way or the other.)

With this done, you should be able to lift the card from its slot, although doing so may require a gentle but firm rocking motion (front to back, never side to side).

...and in With the New

At last, the easy part. Here, we'll be using the top-end graphics card for consumers available now, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

Take your new card and seat it firmly into the available PCI Express slot. If it's wider than the original card, you first may need to open up an additional expansion bracket on the PC case's backplane.

Double-check along the line where the card's edge connector is barely visible along the top of the slot. It should be even with, not tilted versus, the PCI Express slot. Double check that the slot's lock is snugly engaged with the PCB connector on the card. Then secure the card with the screw or screws you removed before...

...and make sure the display outputs are clear for access through the case's back panel.

Plug any necessary power cables into the new card's top power connectors, as described earlier. Note that most power supplies with PCI Express card power cables supply these as what are known as "6+2" connectors, able to plug into a six-pin or eight-pin socket. (The last two pins can be snapped away and left loose for a six-pin socket.) Here, we needed two eight-pin connectors.

Now, button up the system. Put the case cover back on, and reattach all of the exterior cables. If, before, you were powering your monitor off the CPU's integrated graphics, you will want to be sure you're plugging your monitor's cable into a video output on the card, not one on the motherboard's I/O plate. Finish your energy drink, cross your fingers, and boot the system.

The system will try to boot with your new graphics, but so far it has no drivers installed. Thus, it will likely boot into a default system resolution that makes Windows looks strange, low-res, or misshapen. Fear not, this is normal. If your new card shipped with a driver disc, and your PC has an optical drive to handle it, install the driver software from it now.

Better yet, bring up a browser and download the latest driver directly from AMD or Nvidia. You can take the easy route and use the auto-detect tools offered by both companies to make downloading the right driver quick and painless. In addition, running Windows Update in Windows 10 ought to pull down the proper driver automatically. Be patient; modern graphics driver files can be huge.

Once you've got the driver installed, reboot the system and verify that you can change your monitor's resolution to its native setting, and that the new video card is properly identified in Device Manager. You're done! You might want to rerun your benchmarking regimen to quantify the improvements. Then, get back to gaming or producing work...only now, you'll be doing it faster than ever before.