10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

A mid to low level graphics card, the Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition is found in budget machines nowadays, struggling to meet AAA system requirements.

Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition is capable of DirectX 11 gaming requirements.

Here is a quick game performance synopsis for the AAA games played in 2023. In particular we focus on how well the Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition runs at Ultra graphics settings and what frames per second it is getting at 1080p, 1440p and 4K monitor resolutions. This card runs recommended graphics requirements of 449 games from the top 1000 most demanding games being played today.

Running at 1080p this card gets a reasonable frame rate from Days Gone with 52 FPS on Ultra. Then we take a look at Battlefield 2042 which returns a weak 15 FPS. Another title that we looked at is the popular Dying Light 2 which we saw getting a playable 31 FPS.

People are turning their increasingly more powerful graphics cards to the popular 1440p screen size so we tested the Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition to see how it performs on 1440p. First off we have looked at Days Gone where it was playable. The frame rates it scored for the game presets were - Low: 104 FPS, Medium: 82 FPS, High: 55 FPS and Ultra: 39 FPS. We added Battlefield 2042 to our tests and saw it was weak with a 11 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And then tested Dying Light 2 which got 24 FPS at Ultra 1440p. 1440p Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition PC gaming is likely in need of some graphical option tweaks when trying to play modern games.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition in your PC? This Radeon R9 290X Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB 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 Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB 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 Sapphire Vapor-X 8GB Edition.