Black Friday graphics card deals: What to expect and early sales

All modern desktop graphics cards connect via the PCI-Express slot on your desktop computer’s motherboard. As long as you have one slot free (and the required number of slots open to plug it into your computer case), it’ll work. The difference between Nvidia and AMD is pretty slim at most price points. Unless you’re interested in a particular feature of one brand, like Nvidia’s RTX effects or AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution, either will do fine.

Intel’s brand new Arc cards are a different proposition. The company is competing aggressively on price, making these cards a bargain, at least for newer games. But Intel’s drivers are still immature compared to AMD and Nvidia, especially if you’re playing older titles. 

It’s time to break out the tape measure. Almost all modern desktops can fit at least some kind of external graphics card, as long as they have at least one PCIe slot on the motherboard. But before buying a new card, make sure your case can fit it, both in length (measured in millimeters) and in slots (the number of eternal notches at the rear of the case, not physical PCIe connections) it needs. Most mid-range cards use two slots, but more powerful ones can use three or even four.

You also need to make sure that your computer’s power supply can handle the additional watts drawn by the new GPU, and that it has the correct power connections to supply electricity to it. If not, you can always upgrade your power supply, too. 

Generally speaking, the more you spend on a graphics card, the more powerful it will be—the better the effects and the more frames you can push in AAA games. A $1,000 card isn’t necessarily twice as good as a $500 card, but it’ll definitely be a lot better. 

However, there’s such a thing as too much. If your computer is six or seven years old, the “bottleneck” of performance might be your processor or RAM, so spending four digits on a new card wouldn’t be wise. 

It depends. If you’re upgrading to a really powerful graphics card, you definitely want to make sure that your power supply can handle it. If you haven’t upgraded any of the major components in a while, it might be time for a system overhaul, too. That usually means a new processor, motherboard, and sometimes RAM, though AMD AM4 motherboards can slot in relatively new CPUs without needing any other new components. 

If you’re not sure you want to drop that much on new hardware, you can always upgrade the GPU, do some testing in your favorite games, and see if you have the performance increase you want. If not, you can upgrade the other components as needed.