Hard West

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Hard West with this AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination reveals a clear hierarchy across the four available presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 225.2 FPS average, Medium reaches 210.8 FPS, High produces 160.6 FPS, and Ultra drops to 123.4 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is modest—only 14.4 FPS—while the drop from Medium to High is a more substantial 50.2 FPS. This pattern indicates that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance at this resolution, as it retains 93.6% of the Low preset’s frame rate while presumably enabling more graphical features.

Moving to 2560x1440, the same relative ordering persists: Low at 164.9 FPS, Medium at 132.8 FPS, High at 101 FPS, and Ultra at 77.5 FPS. Here, the gap between Low and Medium widens to 32.1 FPS, suggesting that resolution scaling amplifies the cost of the Medium preset’s additional workload. Still, Medium maintains a 31.8 FPS advantage over High, making it the recommended choice for users prioritizing smoothness over maximum detail. At 3840x2160, the pattern shifts more dramatically. Low produces 86.8 FPS, Medium 72 FPS, High 55.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 38.1 FPS. The Ultra preset at this resolution is the only measured configuration below 40 FPS, rendering it impractical for most gameplay scenarios. High remains playable, but Medium offers a 16.9 FPS improvement over High while staying well above the 60 FPS threshold that many users target.

Across all three resolutions, the Medium preset consistently provides the most favorable trade-off between frame rate and visual quality. The data does not support recommending Ultra at any resolution, as it incurs a significant performance penalty—ranging from 37.4 FPS at 1080p to 33.8 FPS at 4K compared to High—without proportional gains in the benchmark metrics. For users with high-refresh-rate displays at 1080p, the Low preset’s 225.2 FPS may be preferable, but for general use, Medium is the optimal default.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 brings substantial resources to Hard West, a turn-based tactics title with relatively modest graphical demands. The GPU’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for the texture and geometry loads typical of a 2015-era game. The memory clock runs at 1313 MHz with 21 Gbps effective speed, while the core operates at a base of 1920 MHz and boosts to 2475 MHz. These specifications place the RTX 4070 in the 81st percentile among all GPUs in the benchmark database, with an average benchmark score of 37283.

The GPU’s nearest rivals in the benchmark data include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (scoring 37507, a 0.6% difference), the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A (38008, 1.9% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38135, 2.2% higher), and the AMD Radeon RX 5300M (36371, 2.5% lower). This clustering indicates that the RTX 4070’s raw compute performance sits in a tight band around the 37000-38000 score range, yet its 29.15 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and Ada Lovelace architecture with 5888 shading units deliver results that scale efficiently in Hard West’s engine.

The GPU’s role in the measured FPS becomes evident when examining resolution scaling. At 1080p, the RTX 4070 is clearly not the bottleneck, as even the Ultra preset reaches 123.4 FPS. The performance delta between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 101.8 FPS, indicating that the GPU has ample headroom to render the game’s scenes regardless of settings. By 1440p, the Ultra preset drops to 77.5 FPS, showing that the increased pixel count begins to stress the GPU, but the 225.2 FPS Low result at 1080p suggests that the RTX 4070 is operating well within its capabilities. At 4K, the Ultra preset’s 38.1 FPS demonstrates the GPU’s limits when pushing four times the 1080p pixel count, yet the Low preset’s 86.8 FPS confirms that the 12 GB frame buffer and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for this title’s requirements. The data shows no indication of VRAM capacity constraints, as the frame rates scale consistently with resolution rather than showing sudden drops that would suggest memory exhaustion.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 ranks 463rd out of 1699 tested combos for Hard West, placing it in the top 27.3% of all configurations in the database. This percentile ranking reflects the system’s overall capability in this title, which is notable given that the CPU is a 5000-series APU with integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics—a component typically associated with entry-level performance. The RTX 4070’s presence boosts the combo substantially, as the CPU’s integrated graphics are not utilized in this configuration.

The combo’s rank of 463 out of 1699 suggests that while the RTX 4070 is a high-end GPU, the Ryzen 5 5600G’s 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and boost of 4.40 GHz may limit performance in certain scenarios. The CPU’s avgBenchmarkScore of 19983 places it in the 78th percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i7-11600H (19949, 0.2% higher), Intel Core i7-11800H (20024, 0.2% lower), AMD EPYC 7713P (20024, 0.2% lower), and AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX (19928, 0.3% higher). These deltas are all within 0.3%, indicating that the 5600G’s compute performance is essentially on par with these alternatives, yet the combo ranking suggests that other CPU-GPU pairings achieve better results in Hard West.

The disparity between the CPU’s 78th percentile and the combo’s 27.3rd percentile ranking indicates that the GPU is the primary driver of performance in this title, but the CPU still contributes to the overall score. The 1699-combo pool includes configurations with both higher- and lower-tier components, and the 463rd position reflects a balanced but not top-tier pairing. For a turn-based tactics game where frame rates rarely drop below playable thresholds, this ranking is more than adequate, but it does not place the combo in the upper echelon of the database.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 225.2 FPS, which is the highest recorded value in the entire dataset. The Medium preset follows at 210.8 FPS, representing a 6.4% reduction from Low. High produces 160.6 FPS, a 23.8% drop from Medium, and Ultra delivers 123.4 FPS, a 23.2% further reduction. The progression from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a total performance loss of 101.8 FPS, or 45.2% of the Low preset’s value.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 164.9 FPS, which is 60.3 FPS lower than at 1080p—a 26.8% reduction attributable to the increased pixel count. Medium reaches 132.8 FPS, a 78 FPS difference from the 1080p Medium result. High produces 101 FPS, and Ultra drops to 77.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 87.4 FPS, which is narrower than the 101.8 FPS gap at 1080p, suggesting that the GPU’s rendering workload becomes more consistent as resolution increases. The 1440p Ultra result of 77.5 FPS remains well above playable thresholds, and the High preset’s 101 FPS offers a smooth experience for most displays.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 86.8 FPS, which is 78.1 FPS lower than the 1080p Low result and 47.4% of that value. Medium produces 72 FPS, High drops to 55.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 38.1 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the only measured configuration below 40 FPS, and it represents a 21.2% reduction from the 4K High preset. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is substantial: the Low preset loses 78.1 FPS (47.4%), Medium loses 60.8 FPS (45.8%), High loses 45.9 FPS (45.4%), and Ultra loses 39.4 FPS (50.8%). These percentages indicate that the RTX 4070’s performance penalty for moving to 4K is consistent across settings, with Ultra experiencing a slightly higher relative loss.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G’s role in Hard West is defined by its 6 cores and 12 threads, built on the Zen 3 architecture with the Cezanne codename. The CPU operates at a base clock of 3.90 GHz and boosts to 4.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. Its cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and 16 MB of L3, which is sufficient for the game’s turn-based logic and unit AI. The CPU’s memory support is DDR4 with dual-channel configuration, providing 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth—a figure that is adequate for feeding the RTX 4070’s 504.2 GB/s GPU memory bandwidth without creating a bottleneck.

Benchmark results for the 5600G show a multicore Cinebench R23 score of 16758 and a single-core score of 2365. The Geekbench multicore score is 7693, while the single-core score is 1933. These scores place the CPU in the 78th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 19983. The nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark data are tightly clustered: the Intel Core i7-11600H scores 19949 (0.2% higher), the Intel Core i7-11800H scores 20024 (0.2% lower), the AMD EPYC 7713P scores 20024 (0.2% lower), and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX scores 19928 (0.3% higher). This tight clustering indicates that the 5600G’s compute performance is competitive with these alternatives, despite the EPYC and Threadripper being enterprise-class processors with far more cores.

In the context of Hard West, the CPU’s 12 threads are more than adequate for the game’s turn-based mechanics, which typically involve limited simultaneous entity processing. The 3dmark scores for the CPU—5451 at 16 threads, 1705 at 2 threads, and 872 at single-thread—show that the CPU scales well with thread count, which is relevant for the game’s background simulation. The Passmark multithread score of 19717 and single-thread score of 3177 further confirm balanced performance. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p, the CPU does not appear to limit the GPU, as the Low preset’s 225.2 FPS is well above typical display refresh rates. However, the combo rank of 463 out of 1699 suggests that other CPUs paired with the RTX 4070 achieve higher results, likely due to higher single-thread performance or faster memory support. The 5600G’s integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are irrelevant in this configuration, as the discrete RTX 4070 handles all rendering duties.