First time video card upgrade - help sought

[eegad]

I’ve got a 3 year old pc that I use for occasional gaming on a small size monitor. Specs are below. I’ve played games like Skyrim, Far Cry 3 & 4, Tomb Raider, Dying Light and others at medium settings just fine. Witcher 3 is mostly playable at lowest settings (even though this pc does not meet minimum requirements). My next must-play game on the horizon is Fallout 4. Its’ specs are even more demanding than Witcher 3. I don’t want to upgrade to a whole new computer yet (for one thing, I still prefer staying on Win7).

I’d like some recommendations for a video card upgrade to extend this pc’s life and let me play some new games for another year or two. I’m currently thinking about a GTX 750ti with 2GB. Seems to have decent performance and low power requirements. Any comments/suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, I’ve never replaced a video card before…any gotchas I should be aware of switching from amd to nvidia?

current pc specs :
Win7 64bit, AMD FX-6120 @ 3.6GHz, 8GB ram, 1 TB HD, 460w PS, Radeon HD 7670 1GB

 

[lehtv]

750 Ti should be a pretty good upgrade over a 7670 (= 6670). It's around three times as fast. Supposedly, NVIDIA hardware and drivers are less stringent on CPU requirements, someone correct me on that if needed. Your FX-6120 should be fine for a 750 Ti. In games that aren't optimized for more than a couple of cores (Skyrim, for instance) you'll probably be slightly limited by the FX but it'll still be a huge jump in gaming performance compared to the 7670.

What brand / model is the power supply?

Also, I’ve never replaced a video card before…any gotchas I should be aware of switching from amd to nvidia?

Uninstall AMD drivers with DDU, remove graphics card, install new graphics card, install NVIDIA drivers.

I don’t want to upgrade to a whole new computer yet (for one thing, I still prefer staying on Win7).

You should be able to reactivate the same Windows license on a new motherboard. I'd suggest upgrading your motherboard and CPU before the end of June 2016, because that's the last opportunity to upgrade Win 7 to Win 10 for free. You should also buy an SSD for the operating system at that time, if budget allows.

 

[RussianSensation]

You should be able to reactivate the same Windows license on a new motherboard. I'd suggest upgrading your motherboard and CPU before the end of June 2016, because that's the last opportunity to upgrade Win 7 to Win 10 for free. You should also buy an SSD for the operating system at that time, if budget allows.

Excellent advice. I would personally suggest going 1 step further on the GPU chain and try to wait out for a deal on a $130 GTX950. I think it's worth the step-up over 750Ti. Right now a lot of 750Ti cards hover around $100-110 which doesn't seem stellar given the sales we've already seen on 950 towards $130-145.