28 Oct 2020 - Graphics card reviewed

While some games have more powerful requirements than this GPU, the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC 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. All games with system requirements of DirectX 11 or lower are met by this card.

Here is a quick game performance synopsis for the AAA games played in 2020. In particular we focus on how well the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition runs at Ultra graphics settings and what frames per second it is getting at 1080p, 1440p and 4K monitor resolutions. 102 games can be played by this graphics card of the 1000 most demanding games being played by PC gamers today.

The 1080p FPS on Ultra for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition shows us that FIFA 21 is getting a strong result of 134 FPS, and then we are seeing Mafia: Definitive Edition returning a weak 12 FPS while another game on our list is the Assassins Creed: Valhalla which is predicted to get 31 frames per second at Ultra 1080p.

Next up we increase screen res tests to accommodate the growing in popularity 1440p screen size. So we booted up Mafia: Definitive Edition to see how the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition dealt with it. It scored up a weak series of FPS results across these graphics presets - Low: 23 FPS, Medium: 18 FPS, High: 12 FPS and Ultra: 9 FPS. Next we looked at Assassins Creed: Valhalla which we predict will be weak with a 24 FPS at Ultra 1440p. And finally looked at FIFA 21 that got an Ultra 1440p FPS of 103. Looking at a few of these 1440p results for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition we get the impression that it is certainly capable of running larger monitor gaming at Ultra or High graphics settings.

How many years will the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition graphics card play newly released games and how long until you should consider upgrading the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition in your PC? We think this Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition has around 6-12 months until an upgrade should be considered.

Whats a good PC graphics upgrade for the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition? A good choice when looking to upgrade the Radeon R9 290 Sapphire Tri-X OC Edition would be the 16 Series GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB which meets 821 of the 1000 top game’s recommended system requirements and has 47% better performance. Alternatively a good upgrade choice for this graphics card today would be the R-500 Series Radeon RX 580 8GB. For comparison of the 1000 most demanding games around today this suggested upgrade is 20% better and can meet 752 of their recommended requirements.