10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

This Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-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.

Game performance for the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition where we look at the bigger games played in 2022. Looking closely at the graphics card frame rate performance on Ultra graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen resolutions. In comparison to the game recommended requirements of the 1000 most demanding games played today this PC hardware can run 306.

The Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition graphics card is returning a weak performance on Far Cry 6 at 1080p of 14 frames per second at Ultra graphics settings. Another popular title that is good to benchmark graphics cards against is Back 4 Blood which we saw got playable frame rates of 36 FPS. A third game we can look at on Ultra at 1080p is the popular Days Gone, which was getting 44 FPS under tests.

As the PC gaming masses explore larger screen resolutions we decided to run some game checks at 1440p across a few popular games. We discovered the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition ran Far Cry 6 to a weak performance level. Results across the graphics settings looked like this, Low: 27 FPS, Medium: 21 FPS, High: 14 FPS and Ultra: 10 FPS. Another game tested was Back 4 Blood, L: 72FPS, M: 57FPS, H: 38FPS, U: 27FPS. And then we checked graphics card performance on Days Gone, which returned L: 88FPS, M: 69FPS, H: 46FPS, U: 33FPS at 1440p. Gaming at 1440p with the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition is going to need to lower its graphics settings to medium on modern games.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition in your PC? Our current calculations suggest a graphics card upgrade will be required in around 12-18 months

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition? A good choice when looking to upgrade the Radeon R9 290 VTX3D X-Edition would be the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB which meets 725 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 23% better performance. Alternatively we would suggest getting a R-500 Series Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB, as it can run 960 of the top 1000 demanding game requirements today with 73% increased graphics performance.