Hard West

Hard West is a turn-based tactics title from 2015, and the measured benchmark data for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 reveals an extreme performance ceiling. The combination delivers frame rates that far exceed display refresh rates at every tested resolution and quality preset, with average FPS figures ranging from 292 at 4K Ultra to a staggering 1141 at 1080p Low. This pairing ranks second out of 3722 tested combinations, indicating that this specific CPU-GPU match is among the most potent configurations for this title, leaving virtually no headroom for the game's engine to be a limiting factor.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data across four presets—Low, Medium, High, and Ultra—shows that the RTX 4080 is so overwhelmingly powerful for this game that even the most demanding settings do not produce playability concerns. At 4K, the Ultra preset delivers an average of 292 FPS, which is still more than double the refresh rate of most high-end monitors. The High preset at 4K raises the average to 342 FPS, while Medium offers 395 FPS with a minimum of 335 FPS recorded. For players prioritizing maximum visual fidelity, the Ultra preset is entirely viable, as the performance floor remains exceptionally high.

However, the data suggests that the Medium preset provides the most balanced experience. It is the only preset across all resolutions that includes both minimum and maximum FPS measurements, indicating a stable frame delivery window. At 1440p, Medium delivers 668 average FPS with a minimum of 568, while at 1080p it achieves 971 average FPS with a minimum of 825. These minimums are still far above any competitive threshold, but the presence of these data points suggests more consistent frame pacing compared to other presets where only averages were captured. The Low preset offers the highest raw throughput, with 464 FPS at 4K, 785 at 1440p, and 1141 at 1080p, but this comes at the cost of visual quality that is unnecessary given the hardware's capability. For an optimal experience that leverages the hardware without sacrificing fidelity, Medium at 4K is the recommended starting point, with Ultra available for those who prioritize image quality above all else.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on a 5 nm process by TSMC. It houses 9728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output pipelines. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2205 MHz and a boost clock of 2505 MHz, with memory clocked at 1400 MHz, translating to 22.4 Gbps effective on its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory. This memory is configured across a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. The card's massive compute resources are reflected in its benchmark scores, including a PassMark G3D score of 34457 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 263779.

In the context of Hard West, the GPU's role is almost trivialized by the game's age and graphical simplicity. The measured frame rates show that the RTX 4080 is never the bottleneck, even at 4K Ultra. The highest settings at 4K produce 292 FPS, which is still a relatively low load for a GPU capable of 48.74 TFLOPS FP32 performance. The pixel rate of 280.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 761.5 GTexel/s are far in excess of what this game demands. The GPU's performance percentile of 86 places it above the vast majority of graphics cards, and its average benchmark score of 54247 is nearly identical to the RTX 4080 SUPER, which scores 54209 with a delta of 0.1%. This data indicates that the RTX 4080 is performing at its expected level, and any frame rate differences between settings are due to GPU load scaling rather than any architectural limitation. The card's 16 GB VRAM is also a non-factor here, as the game's textures are unlikely to approach that capacity at any resolution.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a 5000-series desktop processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Cezanne. It features 6 cores and 12 threads, with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The processor has a 65 W TDP and is built on TSMC's 7 nm process. Its cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and a 16 MB L3 cache. The CPU's integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are present but are completely overshadowed by the discrete RTX 4080. In synthetic benchmarks, the 5600G achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10551 and a single-core score of 1409, with a PassMark multi-thread score of 19717.

For a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, the CPU's role is typically more significant than in fast-paced shooters, as the game logic and AI calculations rely on single-thread performance. The 5600G's single-core performance is adequate, but the measured frame rates suggest that the CPU is not a limiting factor either. At 1080p Low, the combination produces 1141 FPS, which indicates that the CPU can feed frames to the GPU at an extremely high rate. The processor's 3DMark single-thread score of 872 and PassMark single-thread score of 3177 are modest by modern standards, but they are sufficient for this game's engine. The CPU's percentile rank of 74 against all CPUs places it above average, though its nearest rivals—the Intel Core i3-1220P, Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, and Intel Core Ultra 7 155U—all have very similar average scores ranging from 21066 to 21174, with deltas under 0.4%. This suggests the 5600G is a mid-tier performer, but Hard West's requirements are so low that this does not translate to any performance deficit.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 5600G and RTX 4080 achieves a rank of 2 out of 3722 tested combinations in Hard West. This is an exceptionally high placement, indicating that this specific pairing is nearly the best possible configuration for this game. The ranking reflects the overall system capability, where the GPU's immense power is complemented by a CPU that can keep up with the game's demands. The fact that this combo ranks second suggests that only one other tested configuration outperforms it, likely a pairing with a newer or higher-clocked CPU. The delta between the RTX 4080 and its nearest GPU rival, the RTX 4080 SUPER, is only 0.1%, meaning the GPU is essentially at the top of its class. The CPU's performance relative to its rivals is also tightly clustered, with the 5600G being just 0.1% faster than the Intel Core i3-1220P and 0.4% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U. This combination of a top-tier GPU and a competent CPU places it in the 99.95th percentile of all tested combos for this game.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a clear and predictable pattern of frame rate scaling as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 841 at 1080p to 578 at 1440p, and finally to 342 at 4K. This represents a 59.3% decrease from 1080p to 4K. For the Ultra preset, the drop is from 717 at 1080p to 494 at 1440p and 292 at 4K, a 59.3% reduction as well. The Low preset shows a similar trend, falling from 1141 at 1080p to 785 at 1440p and 464 at 4K. The Medium preset, which includes minimum FPS data, shows a drop from 971 at 1080p to 668 at 1440p and 395 at 4K, with minimums scaling from 825 to 568 to 335.

This scaling behavior indicates that the GPU is the primary component responding to resolution changes, as the frame rate drops proportionally with the increase in pixel count. The consistent percentage decrease across all presets suggests that the CPU is not becoming a bottleneck at lower resolutions; instead, the GPU is simply rendering more pixels. The fact that even at 4K Ultra the frame rate remains above 290 FPS means that the system is never pushed to its limits. The data does not show any evidence of CPU limiting, as the frame rates at 1080p are extraordinarily high, which would typically expose a CPU bottleneck if one existed. The scaling curve is smooth and predictable, indicating a well-balanced system where the GPU's workload scales directly with resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 1141 FPS, with no minimum or maximum recorded. The Medium preset averages 971 FPS, with a minimum of 825 and a maximum of 1117. High settings produce an average of 841 FPS, while Ultra drops to 717 FPS. These figures are all above 700 FPS, making the game feel incredibly responsive at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 785 FPS, while Medium averages 668 FPS with a minimum of 568 and maximum of 768. High settings yield 578 FPS, and Ultra produces 494 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is substantial, but the performance remains far above any display's refresh rate.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 464 FPS, Medium averages 395 FPS with a minimum of 335 and maximum of 454, High averages 342 FPS, and Ultra averages 292 FPS. Even at the most demanding configuration of 4K Ultra, the system maintains nearly 300 FPS on averageikuha. The Medium preset's minimum of 335 FPS at 4K is still higher than the maximum refresh rate of most gaming monitors, indicating that the system never dips below a playable threshold. The data across all resolutions and settings shows a monotonic decrease in FPS as both resolution and quality increase, with no anomalies or unexpected dips. The RTX 4080's dominance is clear, as even the lowest recorded minimum FPS (335 at 4K Medium) is higher than what most systems achieve on average in modern titles.