2 Aug 2020 - Graphics card reviewed

While some games have more powerful requirements than this GPU, the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 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. Capable of running games with up to a DirectX 11 requirement.

Game performance for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition where we look at the bigger games played in 2020. Looking closely at the graphics card frame rate performance on Ultra graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen resolutions. The Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition can run the recommended graphics system requirements for 168 games today, of the top 1000 most demanding.

Now onto the frame rates achieved at 1080p. We predict that Microsoft Flight Simulator will get 34 FPS with the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition, Death Stranding getting 34 FPS and Grand Theft Auto VI predicted to get 8 frames per second. All run on Ultra at 1920x1080 screen res.

Increasing resolution to 1440p is something a number of PC gamers are doing today. We tested the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition at 1440p and researched how Microsoft Flight Simulator might perform on it leading us to predict a playable set of FPS results. These were, Low: 67 FPS, Medium: 53 FPS, High: 36 FPS and Ultra: 26 FPS. We then checked out Death Stranding which had a set of graphics results as followed, L: 67FPS, M: 53FPS, H: 36FPS, U: 26FPS. And another popular game was Grand Theft Auto VI with predictions of L: 16FPS, M: 13FPS, H: 9FPS, U: 6FPS at 1440p. Getting popular modern games to run at 1440p on the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition is not ideal and its more advisable to run modern games at 1080p resolution. But if you really want to play games at 1440p then you will likely have to make some graphical adjustments to improve game FPS stability.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition in your PC? We think this Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition has around 6-12 months until an upgrade should be considered.

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition? A suitable upgrade choice for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition is the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, which is 53% more powerful and can run 853 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements. Alternatively a suitable upgrade choice for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire BF4 Edition is the R-500 Series Radeon RX 580 8GB, which is 25% more powerful and can run 790 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements.