10 Aug 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

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

Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition is capable of DirectX 11 gaming requirements.

How well will the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition run 2022 games? We will take a look at the biggest releases and frames per second analysis on Ultra graphics settings. This card runs recommended graphics requirements of 450 games from the top 1000 most demanding games being played today.

Looking at some of the modern popular games people are playing today the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition is running Back 4 Blood and delivering reasonable performances on 1080p Ultra, getting 45 frames per second. Comparing this to Forza Horizon 5 which is getting reasonable results, where it averages 45 FPS. Another popular game we looked at is Grand Theft Auto VI, which is predicted to run at 23 frames per second.

One of the growing popular screen resolutions for PC gaming is the wider 1440p. So we wanted to see how well the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition performed at 1440p by taking a look at some of the current popular games. First we looked at Back 4 Blood and saw it deliver playable frames per second across the following graphics settings - Low: 90 FPS, Medium: 71 FPS, High: 48 FPS and Ultra: 34 FPS. We then checked the performance on Forza Horizon 5 to see if that runs well. It was playable with a 34 FPS at Ultra 1440p. Getting popular modern games to run at 1440p on the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition is ok at playing most games but might need to have the graphics settings lowered to medium preset in some cases.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X MSI Gaming 8GB 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 290X MSI Gaming 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 MSI Gaming 8GB Edition.