10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

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

This card meets game requirements up to DirectX 11.

Here is a performance review on how capable the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition is at running the more popular games of 2023. Specifically looking at this PC hardware’s ability to get suitable frames per second to play on Ultra game settings and what FPS it might get on 1080p, 1440p and 4K screen res. Of the 1000 most demanding recommended specs found in game requirements today, this gpu is more powerful than the graphics requirement of 386 games in todays list.

Looking at some of the modern popular games people are playing today the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition is running Resident Evil 8 and delivering weak performances on 1080p Ultra, getting 17 frames per second. Comparing this to Days Gone which is getting reasonable results, where it averages 47 FPS. Another popular game we looked at is Battlefield 2042, which is running at 8 frames per second.

People are turning their increasingly more powerful graphics cards to the popular 1440p screen size so we tested the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition to see how it performs on 1440p. First off we have looked at Resident Evil 8 where it was weak. The frame rates it scored for the game presets were - Low: 33 FPS, Medium: 26 FPS, High: 18 FPS and Ultra: 13 FPS. We added Days Gone to our tests and saw it was playable with a 36 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And then tested Battlefield 2042 which got 6 FPS at Ultra 1440p. 1440p gaming on the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition 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 XFX Black Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition in your PC? This Radeon R9 290X XFX Black Edition card has 12 to 18 months of latest AAA game play left in it before upgrading should be considered

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290X XFX Black 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 XFX Black Edition.