Hard West

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER produces a distinctive performance profile in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. Benchmark data shows this combination ranks 373rd out of 1699 tested combos, placing it in the top 22 percent of all configurations. The measured results reveal a system where the GPU is rarely the limiting factor, with frame rates scaling more dramatically with resolution than with graphical settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals how this pairing behaves under increasing pixel throughput demands. At High settings, the transition from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 sees average FPS fall from 155.7 to 129.6, a reduction of 26.1 frames. Moving further to 3840x2160 drops the average to 68.9, representing a cumulative 56 percent decrease from the 1080p baseline. This steep decline at 4K indicates the RTX 4080 SUPER’s rendering pipeline becomes the dominant constraint only at the highest pixel counts.

The scaling pattern across settings tells a more nuanced story. At Low settings, the 1080p result of 181.7 FPS drops to 154.2 at 1440p and 107.4 at 4K. The 4K Low figure remains above 100 FPS, suggesting the CPU can still feed the GPU adequately even at reduced graphical loads. However, the gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is substantial: 107.4 versus 54.1 FPS. This 53.3 FPS spread indicates that at 3840x2160, the GPU’s compute resources are being fully exercised by the higher-quality shaders and effects.

At 1080p, the scaling behaves differently. The difference between Low (181.7 FPS) and Ultra (138.8 FPS) is only 42.9 FPS, a smaller absolute gap than at 4K. This compression suggests that at 1080p, the AMD Ryzen 5 3600’s six cores and twelve threads begin to limit the upper ceiling, preventing the RTX 4080 SUPER from fully stretching its legs. The 3.60 GHz base and 4.20 GHz boost clocks appear sufficient for the game’s turn-based logic, but the frame rate ceiling around 182 FPS at Low settings hints at a CPU-imposed cap.

FAQ

Q: Is the RTX 4080 SUPER overkill for Hard West at 1080p?

A: Benchmark results indicate yes. At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves 181.7 FPS, but this is only 43 FPS higher than Ultra settings (138.8 FPS). The relatively narrow spread across settings at 1080p suggests the CPU, not the GPU, is the primary bottleneck at this resolution.

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Hard West?

A: The data shows 2560x1440 as the sweet spot. At High settings, the system maintains 129.6 FPS, which is 60.7 FPS higher than the 4K result. Even at Ultra, 1440p delivers 100.1 FPS, comfortably above the 54.1 FPS seen at 4K Ultra.

Q: How does the GPU’s memory configuration affect performance?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER comes with 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 736.3 GB/s bandwidth. For a 2015 turn-based tactics game, this capacity is far beyond what the game requires, meaning memory bandwidth is unlikely to be a limiting factor in any of the measured scenarios.

Q: Does the CPU hold back performance at any resolution?

A: Evidence points to CPU limitation at 1080p. At Low settings, 1080p yields 181.7 FPS, while 1440p yields 154.2 FPS—a proportional drop that matches pixel count increases. However, the 1080p Low figure appears capped relative to what the RTX 4080 SUPER could theoretically produce, given its Passmark G3D score of 34245.

Q: How does the RTX 4080 SUPER compare to its closest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score of 53610 is 0.2 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (53489) and 2.9 percent ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (52086). These small deltas suggest the 4080 SUPER holds a modest lead over its nearest competitors in raw compute.

Q: What frame rate can users expect at 4K with medium settings?

A: The measured data shows 87 FPS at 3840x2160 with Medium settings. This is 32.9 FPS higher than Ultra settings at the same resolution, indicating that dropping from Ultra to Medium provides a significant performance boost without a massive visual compromise.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using a 5 nm process, with the AD103 chip containing 45,900 million transistors. Its base clock of 2295 MHz boosts to 2550 MHz, and the memory runs at 1438 MHz with 23 Gbps effective speed. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s, figures that are far above what a turn-based tactics game from 2015 requires.

The 16 GB GDDR6X frame buffer, running across a 256-bit bus, delivers 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. In Hard West, this memory subsystem never approaches saturation. Even at 4K Ultra, where the game produces 54.1 FPS, the GPU’s FP32 throughput of 52.22 TFLOPS is the more relevant metric. The game’s visual effects, including lighting and shadow calculations, appear to scale with the GPU’s shading units (10240) and TMUs (320), as evidenced by the 53.3 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K.

The GPU’s percentile ranking of 88 versus all GPUs, combined with a Passmark G3D score of 34245, confirms its position as a high-end part. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, scores 53489, which is 0.2 percent lower. This margin is negligible in real-world gaming, but the RTX 4080 SUPER’s Ada Lovelace architecture provides feature advantages that do not manifest in this older game title. The 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are present but largely idle in Hard West, which does not utilize ray tracing or DLSS. The GPU’s measured performance here is purely rasterization-based.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates. Low settings produce 181.7 FPS, Medium settings yield 168.6 FPS, High settings reach 155.7 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 138.8 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 42.9 FPS reduction, or roughly 24 percent. This is the tightest spread across all resolutions, reinforcing the CPU limitation theory at 1080p.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong but show wider gaps. Low settings average 154.2 FPS, Medium settings hit 143.5 FPS, High settings sustain 129.6 FPS, and Ultra settings produce 100.1 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra here is 54.1 FPS, larger than at 1080p, indicating the GPU is starting to take on more responsibility for frame generation.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens considerably. Low settings deliver 107.4 FPS, Medium settings achieve 87 FPS, High settings drop to 68.9 FPS, and Ultra settings bottom out at 54.1 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 53.3 FPS, nearly identical in absolute terms to the 1440p spread, but the percentage difference is much larger. At 4K, Ultra settings produce only 50 percent of the Low settings frame rate.

The settings scaling at each resolution reveals the game’s rendering cost structure. At 1080p, the jump from High to Ultra costs 16.9 FPS, while at 1440p the same jump costs 29.5 FPS. At 4K, the High to Ultra transition costs 14.8 FPS. This non-linear behavior suggests that certain Ultra effects, likely shadow resolution and post-processing, have a fixed cost that becomes relatively less impactful at higher resolutions where pixel throughput dominates.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination ranks 373rd out of 1699 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the 78th percentile of all configurations. This is a strong showing for a CPU that was released in 2019 with a launch MSRP of $199, paired with a GPU that launched in 2024 at 999 USD. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 76 versus all CPUs is slightly below the combo’s overall ranking, suggesting the GPU is doing more of the heavy lifting.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i5-11400, which scores 18150 and is 0.1 percent behind, and the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS at 18101, which is 0.2 percent ahead. These tiny deltas indicate that the Ryzen 5 3600 remains competitive with newer mid-range processors in general compute tasks. However, in Hard West, the game’s age and turn-based nature mean that even a modest six-core, twelve-thread CPU can maintain adequate frame pacing.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show a similar pattern. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT scores 53489, a 0.2 percent deficit, while the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti scores 52086, a 2.9 percent deficit. The RTX 4080 SUPER’s 88th percentile ranking among all GPUs underscores its high-end positioning. In the context of Hard West, this GPU is vastly overprovisioned for the game’s requirements, yet the measured results show it still produces playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra.

The combo’s rank of 373 suggests that many other CPU-GPU pairs deliver higher frame rates in this title. This is likely due to newer CPUs with higher single-thread performance, which matters more in a game that may not fully utilize twelve threads. The Ryzen 5 3600’s single-thread score of 696 in 3DMark and 2124 in Cinebench R23 are solid but not exceptional, and Hard West’s engine appears sensitive to single-thread performance given the 1080p ceiling observed. The data indicates that users seeking maximum frame rates in this game would benefit more from a CPU upgrade than a GPU upgrade, as the RTX 4080 SUPER is already delivering results that approach the CPU’s feeding capacity.