[STEAM] 2026 may be the year I finally move on from my wizened, ancient, trusty GTX 970

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I bought my GPU the year Fallout 4 came out. Image via Bethesda In that sense, I struck the jackpot, I think.

You see, I generally do one big computer upgrade per decade and go massively overboard to ensure I won’t have to think about it again for a very long time (it’s usually triggered by some sort of computer issue.) The last time was in 2020, and it was a wholesale affair with the exception of the graphics card: A Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 gigabytes of RAM (do I feel smart now, looking at the prices), a new PSU and motherboard, a case and storage—it’s treating me rather well still, except for the ever-tightening bottleneck we’re currently discussing.

The GTX 970 may have been a top-tier card back in 2015, but 2015 was, I’m sorry to say, over 10 years ago, and we are now all a decade closer to death. In many ways, my GPU is the more vigorous out of the two of us, though much like how I no longer fit into a kitchen cupboard the way I did as a kid, the graphics card humming away in my system also isn’t quite as nimble as it used to be.

I’m not the only one who stuck with this beast of a card, one of its generation’s best, for such an extended ******* of time—Phil Hayton of GamesRadar also

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, showing that it could still produce respectable if unspectacular stats on the top games at that point, though I somehow doubt he’s still treating it as his daily driver the way I still do with mine.

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario,

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and the aging of my wizened GPU, but having started out my gaming career in the MS-DOS days in the previous millennium, I’ve never been much of a graphics snob. Sure, there are some experiences I know I’d rather try later without having to sacrifice too many details—I’ve had my eye on the voxel-destruction paradise of Teardown for the better part of a half-decade now—but there honestly haven’t been that many top-tier experiences where I felt like I’d really need the better look to fully enjoy what I’m getting myself into. I can

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without elite graphics fidelity, thank you very much.

At least as far as playing the game is concerned. Spare a thought for my dear GPU whenever I try to stream something beyond Hearthstone or chess, the poor old thing damn near bursting into flames every time I tiptoe towards something more graphics-intensive.

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This will need more than what my GPU can handle. Image via Tinybuild Honestly, the game that might tip the scales for me (

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) is Kingmakers, which is exactly the kind of bonkers idiocy I’m looking for these days in my gaming. I didn’t enjoy the first-person supersonic superhero experience of Megaton Rainfall too much, but that’s the vibe I’m getting from the title, and if it does come anywhere near to what it promises, I won’t want to experience it as a pixelated slideshow. But until then, I’ll likely keep this ancient workhorse in my embrace. I’m still not ready to say goodbye.

Happy New Year, my precious GTX 970, then. May we both make it to the end of 2026, still in one piece.

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