20 Feb 2021 - Graphics card reviewed

Gamers upgrading will be considering the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition graphics card as a serious price to performance entry point. This card will meet and play most demanding AAA games and do so with good graphics setting as standard, and confidently pushing past the recommended game system requirements needed to run today’s games. Capable of running games with up to a DirectX 12 requirement.

Here is a quick game performance synopsis for the AAA games played in 2021. In particular we focus on how well the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition runs at Ultra graphics settings and what frames per second it is getting at 1080p, 1440p and 4K monitor resolutions. In terms of performance against the most demanding games today this graphics card can play 211 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements.

Running at 1080p this card is predicted to get a weak frame rate from Far Cry 6 with 20 FPS on Ultra. Then we take a look at Valheim which returns a playable 44 FPS. Another title that we looked at is the popular Hitman 3 which we saw getting a playable 26 FPS.

Next up we increase screen res tests to accommodate the growing in popularity 1440p screen size. So we researched the upcoming Far Cry 6 to predict how the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition would deal with it. Our research revealed a weak series of FPS results across these graphics presets - Low: 40 FPS, Medium: 32 FPS, High: 21 FPS and Ultra: 15 FPS. Next we looked at Valheim which was playable with a 33 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And finally looked at Hitman 3 that got an Ultra 1440p FPS of 20. In summary we feel the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition running at 1440p is not the best resolution for this GPU, but if you adjust some graphics settings, perhaps lowering to medium or low at 1440p then this graphics card might be ok.

How many years will the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition in your PC? This Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-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 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition? A suitable upgrade choice for the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition is the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, which is 38% more powerful and can run 800 of the 1000 most demanding PC games beating their recommended requirements. Alternatively a good choice when looking to upgrade the Radeon R9 390X Sapphire Tri-X 8GB Edition would be the R-500 Series Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB which meets 909 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 48% better performance.