Hard West

# Hard West with AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D + Intel Arc B390

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D paired with the Intel Arc B390 delivers a strictly entry-level experience in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. Benchmark data shows this combo ranks 2614th out of 2949 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 11% of all systems evaluated. The Arc B390, an integrated GPU based on the Xe3-LPG architecture, sits at the 9th percentile among all GPUs, while the Ryzen 5 5500X3D holds the 85th percentile among CPUs — a lopsided pairing where the processor is clearly not the bottleneck. The measured frame rates across resolutions and settings tell a consistent story: this system is only comfortable at 1080p with reduced quality settings, and it struggles badly at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate collapse from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals exactly where the performance ceiling sits. At Low settings, the system produces 87 FPS at 1920x1080, which drops to 55 FPS at 2560x1440 — a 37% reduction — and then falls to 29 FPS at 3840x2160, a 67% drop from the 1080p figure. This scaling pattern is far steeper than what a CPU-limited scenario would show; the Arc B390's integrated nature and shared memory bandwidth are the dominant factors. The GPU's memory bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent," which means the system's DDR4 memory speed dictates how quickly textures and geometry can be fed to the rendering pipeline, and at 4K the demand outstrips what this configuration can supply.

Moving to Medium settings, the pattern repeats with slightly different magnitudes. At 1080p Medium, the average is 71 FPS, dropping to 45 FPS at 1440p (a 37% loss) and then to 24 FPS at 4K (a 66% loss from 1080p). The consistency of these percentage drops across settings — roughly one-third lost at 1440p and two-thirds lost at 4K — points to a purely GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect the 1080p-to-1440p gap to be smaller, since the Ryzen 5 5500X3D has ample headroom at lower resolutions. Instead, the data shows the integrated GPU is overwhelmed by pixel count long before the processor breaks a sweat.

At High settings, the resolution scaling is even more punishing. The 1080p High average of 55 FPS drops to 35 FPS at 1440p (a 36% loss) and then to 18 FPS at 4K (a 67% loss from 1080p). Ultra settings show the same trend from a lower baseline: 41 FPS at 1080p, 26 FPS at 1440p, and 14 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 14 FPS is effectively unplayable for any real-time interaction, though Hard West's turn-based nature means even low frame rates are technically functional — just unpleasant. The fact that every setting tier shows nearly identical percentage drops between resolutions confirms the GPU is the sole limiting component; the CPU's contribution is essentially constant across all tested configurations.

Settings Recommendations

For a playable experience, the data points to 1080p Low as the only setting/resolution combination that clears the 60 FPS threshold comfortably. The measured 87 FPS average at 1080p Low gives enough headroom for the occasional slowdown without dropping below acceptable responsiveness. At 1080p Medium, the 71 FPS average is still smooth, but the minimum measured FPS of 61 at this setting suggests you're riding close to the edge — any particularly busy scene could dip below 60, though for a turn-based tactics game that's rarely a practical problem.

If visual quality matters more than raw frame rate, 1080p High at 55 FPS is a reasonable compromise. This setting stays above 30 FPS with a solid margin, and the turn-based genre means the difference between 55 and 87 FPS is mostly about camera panning smoothness rather than competitive advantage. The minimum FPS at High is not reported in the data, but the average suggests it should stay within playable territory. At 1080p Ultra, the 41 FPS average starts to feel sluggish during camera movements and animation playback, though it remains functional.

Above 1080p, the recommendations get grim. At 1440p, only Low settings (55 FPS) are genuinely playable; Medium drops to 45 FPS and High to 35 FPS, both of which will feel choppy. At 4K, even Low settings only reach 29 FPS, and everything else falls below 24 FPS — including the 18 FPS High result and 14 FPS Ultra result. Given that Hard West is a turn-based title, the practical recommendation is to accept lower settings rather than lower resolution: 1080p High at 55 FPS will look better and play smoother than 1440p Low at 55 FPS, since the pixel density difference is less noticeable in a static tactical view than the loss of shadows and effects.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2614 out of 2949 puts this system in the 11th percentile of all tested combinations for Hard West. That is a poor result for a game from 2015, especially when the CPU is a modern 6-core/12-thread part with 96 MB of L3 cache. The ranking disparity between the CPU and GPU components is stark: the Ryzen 5 5500X3D scores in the 85th percentile among all CPUs, while the Arc B390 sits at the 9th percentile among GPUs. This 76-point gap between component percentiles is among the largest imbalances you will see in tested systems, and it means the GPU is dragging the entire experience down.

Compared to the GPU's nearest rivals, the Arc B390 is barely ahead of decade-old entry-level discrete cards. Its average benchmark score of 1482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 places it just 1.3% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% ahead of the GeForce 800M (1460), 2.5% ahead of the GT 625 OEM (1446), and 2.7% ahead of the GT 710 (1443). These deltas are within run-to-run variance, meaning the Arc B390 effectively performs at the level of a 2011-era entry GPU in this synthetic test. The fact that this integrated part is being compared to the GT 520MX — a GPU that was low-end when it launched — tells you everything about its expected gaming performance.

The CPU's nearest rivals, by contrast, show a much tighter and more respectable grouping. The Ryzen 5 5500X3D's average benchmark score of 37018 is 0.2% ahead of the Ryzen 5 5600F (36945) and the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 (36938), while sitting 0.2% behind the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37093) and 0.3% behind the Intel Core i9-12900T (37112). These sub-1% deltas indicate the 5500X3D is competitively positioned within its CPU class, and the 96 MB of L3 cache gives it a unique advantage in cache-sensitive workloads. None of that matters in Hard West, though, because the GPU becomes the bottleneck long before the CPU's capabilities are tested.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its only playable results. Low settings produce an average of 87 FPS, which is the single highest measured frame rate across the entire test matrix. Medium settings drop to 71 FPS with a minimum of 61 and maximum of 82, showing tight frame pacing and no severe dips. High settings average 55 FPS, while Ultra falls to 41 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 46 FPS, indicating that the GPU's fill rate and shader throughput are the limiting factors as quality settings increase.

At 2560x1440, the performance falls off a cliff. Low settings average 55 FPS — identical to the 1080p High result, which illustrates how resolution and settings trade off against each other. Medium averages 45 FPS with a minimum of 38 and maximum of 52, which is the only 1440p setting with reported min/max data. High drops to 35 FPS, and Ultra falls to 26 FPS. The 1440p results are all below what most players would consider smooth for a game with camera movement, though the turn-based nature of Hard West makes 35-45 FPS tolerable if you are patient.

At 3840x2160, the system is effectively out of its depth. Low settings average 29 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 20 and maximum of 27, High averages 18 FPS, and Ultra averages 14 FPS. None of these are playable by any reasonable standard, even for a turn-based game. The 4K results show a compression of the settings spread — only 15 FPS separates Low from Ultra at 4K, compared to 46 FPS at 1080p — which indicates that the GPU is so heavily pixel-bound at 4K that quality settings make less difference than they do at lower resolutions.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated GPU built on the 3nm process with the Xe3-LPG architecture, part of the Panther Lake chip. It operates with a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 2500 MHz, which is a wide frequency range that allows the GPU to idle efficiently but also scale up when needed. The chip contains 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output units, along with 12 ray tracing cores. Its peak FP32 throughput is 7.680 TFLOPS, and it supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

The critical limitation is the memory configuration. The Arc B390 uses "System Shared" memory in every respect — size, type, and bus width are all system-dependent, and bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent." This means the GPU is borrowing from the system's DDR4 memory over the same bus the CPU uses, which creates severe bandwidth constraints. In a game like Hard West, which was designed for discrete GPUs with dedicated VRAM, this shared memory arrangement causes significant performance degradation, particularly at higher resolutions where texture storage and frame buffer requirements grow. The 80 W TDP for the entire GPU also indicates a power envelope that cannot support high sustained clocks under load.

The GPU's benchmark results confirm its entry-level status. Its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1482 places it at the 9th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals are all NVIDIA parts from a decade ago. The 1.3% delta to the GT 520MX is within noise, meaning the Arc B390 is effectively a modern integrated part that performs like an ancient discrete one. In Hard West specifically, the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth constraints show up clearly in the resolution scaling — the steep drops from 1080p to 4K are classic symptoms of a GPU running out of memory bandwidth and pixel throughput.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Vermeer codename) built on TSMC's 7nm process. It runs at a 3.00 GHz base clock and 4.00 GHz boost clock, with a 105 W TDP on the AMD Socket AM4 platform. Its cache configuration is notable: 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and a massive 96 MB of shared L3 cache. This large L3 is the X3D family's signature feature, designed to improve performance in cache-sensitive workloads. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration with 51.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and it uses PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5500X3D performs well. Its PassMark multithread score is 20363, single-thread score is 2941, and average benchmark score is 37018. It excels at integer math (60033) and floating-point math (34511), with a strong data compression score of 230392. Its percentile ranking of 85th among all CPUs places it in the upper tier of processors, and its nearest rivals are all within 0.3% of its average score. This is a CPU that can handle modern games without breaking a sweat — in most gaming scenarios, it would be the last component to become a bottleneck.

In Hard West, however, the CPU's role is minimal. The game is a turn-based tactics title released in 2015, which means its CPU demands are modest by modern standards. The Ryzen 5 5500X3D's 6 cores and 12 threads at up to 4.00 GHz are more than sufficient to feed the Arc B390 with draw calls and game logic. The evidence for this is in the resolution scaling: if the CPU were the bottleneck, we would see similar frame rates across resolutions, but instead we see a 300% difference between 1080p Low and 4K Ultra (87 FPS vs 14 FPS). The CPU's 96 MB of L3 cache and Zen 3 architecture provide more than enough headroom for a 2015 tactical game, meaning the system's poor performance in Hard West is entirely attributable to the GPU. The processor is effectively idling while the integrated graphics struggles to keep up.