The R9 290X is a bit of a beast, it's what I bought when I put my rig together little over a year ago. I'm pretty sure it'll last you a few years, even longer if you value speed over bling.

I've been a bit out of touch with the graphics race for a while, but its nice to see the naming conventions remains as ridiculous as before.

the 290x it almost twice the card than the 380x.

Well, I would suggest to buy a new card when they announce The Witcher 4. :-)

More impressive is the on die layered memory available on their current range of Fury cards.

The 290X is still a very good GPU which should last you about 3 years more and it should be able to handle most games very well. Keep in mind that sometimes if a game isn't performing very well, it might not be your card's fault but the game itself.

For the record I use middle class GPU's, a GTX 760 and 960. The 760 being more than 2 years old now it can still handle it's own in most games and it's a weaker GPU than yours.

While I can't predict how long will R9 last for you, I suppose that at least for two years you'll be good with it, especially since you value framerate over (top) graphics quality.

I still use a 5830 which I find more than adequate for my gaming needs since I don't play the newer games and I think I can live with it at least until I'll decide to buy Witcher 3 or newer AAA games start dropping their DRM and getting released on GOG.

The biggest hit on my FPS was when I upgraded from my 17" monitor to a 23" and set the resolution to 1080p but then again I can get some more FPS by lowering some graphics options or set the resolution lower in some games like Skyrim where I use custom FX shaders and many other mods and HD textures. (obviously, vanilla game runs superbly with everything maxed out).