10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

This Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition graphics card is considered budget with poor modern game performance when playing anything more demanding than indie game requirements.

All games with system requirements of DirectX 11 or lower are met by this card.

Lets look at the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition game performance guide for some of the biggest games played in 2023. In particular we will see how well this graphics card runs on Ultra settings on 1080p resolution as well as 1440p and 4K. The Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition can run the recommended graphics system requirements for 363 games today, of the top 1000 most demanding.

Running at 1080p this card gets a playable frame rate from Back 4 Blood with 39 FPS on Ultra. Then we take a look at Grand Theft Auto VI which is predicted to return a weak 15 FPS. Another title that we looked at is the popular Resident Evil 8 which we saw getting a weak 15 FPS.

With PC gamers looking for larger screen sizes like 1440p we tested the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition by playing Back 4 Blood which yielded a playable performance. Its FPS results for the graphics settings are as follows - L: 78FPS, M: 61FPS, H: 41FPS, U: 29FPS. Another popular game we researched with this card was Grand Theft Auto VI and that was weak. This graphics card is predicted to deliver 11 FPS at Ultra 1440p. Another popular title was Resident Evil 8 which gets weak results with a 11FPS on Ultra 1440p. Looking at a few of these 1440p results for the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition we get the impression that it is going to struggle to keep a solid FPS, but a modern game could have a few options tweaked to get it playable at this res but on low graphics settings.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition in your PC? 12-18 months of top end gaming is still left in this graphics card

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition? There are no graphics cards on the current market that would provide a big enough increase in performance to warrant upgrading the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor OC Edition.