4 Apr 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

While some games have more powerful requirements than this GPU, the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition is only really challenged by the most demanding games released today, but normally it is more than capable of running games with a stable frame rate at 1080p. All games with system requirements of DirectX 11 or lower are met by this card.

What FPS performance can the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition get on latest AAA 2021 games? In particular our game review looks at the FPS achieved running on Ultra graphics settings on the 1080p screen resolution as well as 1440p and 4K. Of the 1000 most demanding recommended specs found in game requirements today, this gpu is more powerful than the graphics requirement of 102 games in todays list.

Looking at some of the modern popular games people are playing today the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition is running Outriders and delivering playable performances on 1080p Ultra, getting 25 frames per second. Comparing this to Valheim which is getting playable results, where it averages 43 FPS. Another popular game we looked at is Monster Hunter Rise, which is predicted to run at 51 frames per second.

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 290X MSI Gaming Edition ran Outriders to a weak performance level. Results across the graphics settings looked like this, Low: 49 FPS, Medium: 39 FPS, High: 26 FPS and Ultra: 19 FPS. Another game tested was Valheim, L: 86FPS, M: 67FPS, H: 45FPS, U: 32FPS. And then we researched potential graphics card performance on Monster Hunter Rise, wih estimates revealing L: 102FPS, M: 80FPS, H: 54FPS, U: 39FPS at 1440p. After a look at the popular games running at 1440p with the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition, this is a reasonable performance fit for this resolution. Some of the more resource intensive games may well need a few graphical tweak to get the most out of the graphics card at this increased resolution.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition in your PC? We think this Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition has around 6-12 months until an upgrade should be considered.

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming Edition? A great upgrade graphics card would be a 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, which has 41% better performance and can run 789 of the top 1000 demanding game requirements today. Alternatively if you are thinking of upgrading this graphics card then we would currently suggest the R-500 Series Radeon RX 590 8GB. This PC hardware upgrade performs 22% better and can run 733 of today’s 1000 most demanding PC games.