2 Aug 2020 - Graphics card reviewed

While some games have more powerful requirements than this GPU, the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB 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.

What FPS performance can the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition get on latest AAA 2020 games? In particular our game review looks at the FPS achieved running on Ultra graphics settings on the 1080p screen resolution as well as 1440p and 4K. We look at 1000 of the most demanding games available today and this GPU is better than the recommended graphics requirement of more than 364 games in the list.

The 1080p FPS on Ultra for the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition shows us that Grounded is getting a reasonable result of 57 FPS, and then we are seeing Valorant returning a strong 481 FPS while another game on our list is the Horizon: Zero Dawn which is getting 47 frames per second at Ultra 1080p.

People are turning their increasingly more powerful graphics cards to the popular 1440p screen size so we tested the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition to see how it performs on 1440p. First off we have looked at Valorant where it was strong. The frame rates it scored for the game presets were - Low: 968 FPS, Medium: 762 FPS, High: 513 FPS and Ultra: 366 FPS. We added Horizon: Zero Dawn to our tests and saw it was playable with a 36 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And then tested Grounded which got 43 FPS at Ultra 1440p. 1440p Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition PC gaming is a very good hardware option at these screen sizes. Ultra is easily achieved across almost all games at 1440p and we would suggest an increase of screen size up to 4K for this graphics card.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition in your PC? This Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB 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 PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition? A good choice when looking to upgrade the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition would be the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB which meets 852 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 40% better performance. Alternatively a suitable upgrade choice for the Radeon R9 290X PowerColor PCS+ 4GB Edition is the R-500 Series Radeon RX 590 8GB, which is 21% more powerful and can run 804 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements.