10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

The Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition is a very low performing piece of gaming hardware and can probably only run indie system requirements.

This card meets game requirements up to DirectX 11.

Here is a quick game performance synopsis for the AAA games played in 2023. In particular we focus on how well the Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition runs at Ultra graphics settings and what frames per second it is getting at 1080p, 1440p and 4K monitor resolutions. The Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition can run the recommended graphics system requirements for 232 games today, of the top 1000 most demanding.

First we looked at 1080p resolution for the Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition performance to explore what sort of benchmarks it would achieve on the popular title Forza Horizon 5 and saw it deliver weak frames per second across the following graphics settings - Low: 53 FPS, Medium: 42 FPS, High: 28 FPS and Ultra: 20 FPS. We proceeded to look at Grand Theft Auto VI to see how that compared and predict that it will return a weak 0 FPS at Ultra 1080p.

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 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition ran Forza Horizon 5 to a weak performance level. Results across the graphics settings looked like this, Low: 40 FPS, Medium: 32 FPS, High: 21 FPS and Ultra: 15 FPS. Another game researched was Grand Theft Auto VI with predictions of L: 0FPS, M: 0FPS, H: 0FPS, U: 0FPS. And then we checked graphics card performance on Dying Light 2, which returned L: 2FPS, M: 2FPS, H: 1FPS, U: 1FPS at 1440p. 1440p Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition PC gaming is not powerful enough to deal with the increased resolution.

How many years will the Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB 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 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition? Are you looking to upgrade a Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition? Then we would suggest getting a RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB, as it can run 716 of the top 1000 demanding game requirements today with 52% increased graphics performance. Alternatively a good choice when looking to upgrade the Radeon R9 280X MSI Gaming 6GB Edition would be the RX 5000 Series Radeon RX 5300 which meets 300 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 22% better performance.