Hard West

# Hard West with AMD Ryzen 5 5600G + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Hard West, the 2015 turn-based tactics title, presents an interesting benchmark scenario when paired with AMD's Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090. The combination places 19th out of 3,722 tested combos in this game, a position that reflects the unusual pairing of a mid-range 2021 CPU with a flagship 2025 GPU. The measured frame rates across resolutions and settings reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at lower settings, but which begins to show CPU limitations as graphical fidelity increases.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Cezanne. It operates with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, built on TSMC's 7 nm process with 10,700 million transistors on a 180 mm² die. The CPU supports DDR4 memory through a dual-channel bus with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth, and it carries 16 MB of L3 cache alongside 64 KB L1 and 512 KB L2 per core. Its integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are present but irrelevant in this discrete GPU configuration.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5600G demonstrates solid single-threaded performance with a 3DMark single-thread score of 872 and a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1,409. Multi-threaded results are respectable for a 6-core part: Cinebench R23 multi-core reaches 10,551, while Geekbench multi-core hits 8,428. The CPU's percentile versus all CPUs sits at 74, indicating it outperforms roughly three-quarters of processors in the database. Its average benchmark score of 21,088 places it within 0.1% of the Intel Core i3-1220P and 0.4% of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U, showing tight competition at this performance tier.

For Hard West, a turn-based tactics game from 2015, the CPU demands are modest compared to modern titles. The 5600G's six cores and twelve threads provide ample processing headroom for game logic, AI pathfinding, and turn resolution. The boost clock of 4.40 GHz helps with the single-threaded tasks that often dominate older game engines. However, the data suggests that at 1080p with Low settings, the CPU becomes the primary bottleneck, capping frame rates below what the RTX 5090 could theoretically deliver. The gap between 1080p Low at 261 FPS and 4K Low at 188 FPS indicates that while resolution scaling is present, the CPU limits absolute maximum frame output.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 represents the flagship of the GeForce 50-series, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB202 chip on TSMC's 5 nm process. This GPU contains 92,200 million transistors across a 750 mm² die, with a transistor density of 122.9 million per mm². The card operates at a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz or 28 Gbps effective. It features 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output pipelines provide substantial raw throughput, with FP32 performance rated at 104.8 TFLOPS.

The RTX 5090's benchmark credentials are equally imposing. It achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 334,370. In Passmark testing, the GPU scores 39,650 in G3D and 26,756 in compute, with a percentile versus all GPUs of 92. Its average benchmark score of 79,842 places it within 0.3% of the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB and 1.1% of the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT, though these comparisons reflect compute workloads more than gaming performance.

In Hard West, the RTX 5090's capabilities are only partially exercised. The game's 2015-era graphics engine does not utilize modern features like ray tracing or DLSS, meaning the GPU's 170 RT cores and 680 tensor cores remain largely idle. Instead, the card's raw rasterization power drives frame rates that exceed 200 FPS at most settings below 4K. The 32 GB of VRAM is massively over-provisioned for this title, which would struggle to use even 4 GB at 4K Ultra. The GPU's 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth ensures that texture streaming and memory-bound operations never become limiting factors at any tested resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 achieves a combo rank of 19th out of 3,722 tested combinations in Hard West. This top-0.5% placement reflects the GPU's dominance in this title, while the CPU's mid-range standing prevents the combo from reaching the absolute pinnacle of the rankings. The 74th percentile CPU and 92nd percentile GPU combine to produce a system that outperforms the vast majority of configurations, but which leaves performance on the table compared to combos featuring higher-end processors.

The ranking disparity between components is telling. While the RTX 5090 sits in the 92nd percentile among all GPUs, the Ryzen 5 5600G's 74th percentile standing suggests that other tested combos with this GPU and stronger CPUs achieve higher frame rates, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU overhead is more pronounced. The 19th place ranking indicates that roughly 18 other CPU-GPU pairings deliver better Hard West performance, likely featuring processors with higher single-threaded scores and greater memory bandwidth.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 261 FPS, which represents the ceiling for this configuration. Medium settings reduce the average to 227 FPS, with a minimum of 193 FPS and maximum of 261 FPS. High settings yield 214 FPS average, while Ultra settings produce 197 FPS. The relatively small spread between Low and Ultra at 1080p—just 64 FPS—indicates that the CPU, not the GPU, is the limiting factor at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, frame rates remain high but begin to show GPU scaling. Low settings average 231 FPS, a 30 FPS drop from 1080p. Medium settings average 201 FPS with a range of 171 to 231 FPS. High settings produce 184 FPS, while Ultra settings average 147 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 84 FPS at 1440p, suggesting the GPU is becoming more engaged as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the GPU's workload increases substantially. Low settings average 188 FPS, Medium settings average 130 FPS with a range of 111 to 150 FPS, High settings produce 109 FPS, and Ultra settings drop to 88 FPS. The spread between Low and Ultra at 4K reaches 100 FPS, confirming that the RTX 5090 is now the dominant factor in determining performance. The 4K Ultra result of 88 FPS remains highly playable, but the scaling from 4K Low to 4K Ultra shows a 53% performance reduction.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling pattern reveals a system transitioning from CPU-bound at 1080p to GPU-bound at 4K. From 1080p Low to 1440p Low, frame rates drop from 261 to 231 FPS, an 11.5% reduction. Continuing to 4K Low, the average falls to 188 FPS, representing an additional 18.6% drop from 1440p. These reductions are modest compared to what a purely GPU-limited scenario would produce, indicating that the CPU constrains maximum frame rates even at lower resolutions.

At Ultra settings, the scaling pattern shifts dramatically. From 1080p Ultra at 197 FPS to 1440p Ultra at 147 FPS, the drop is 25.4%. From 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra at 88 FPS, the reduction is 40.1%. This steeper decline at higher settings demonstrates that the GPU is now the primary bottleneck, as the increased pixel count and graphical complexity overwhelm the RTX 5090's capabilities relative to the CPU's output limits.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the Ryzen 5 5600G's single-threaded performance caps frame rates around 260 FPS regardless of GPU headroom. At 4K, the RTX 5090's rasterization throughput becomes the limiting factor, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom to avoid becoming a constraint. The transition point appears to occur between 1440p and 4K, where the GPU workload finally exceeds the CPU's ability to feed it.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 4K resolution, the Medium preset at 130 FPS average offers the best balance of visual quality and performance. The jump from Medium to High at 109 FPS represents a 16% performance cost for what is likely a modest visual improvement in this 2015 title. Ultra at 88 FPS remains playable but sacrifices 32% of Medium's frame rate for incremental graphical gains. Given Hard West's turn-based nature, even 88 FPS at Ultra provides smooth camera panning and unit animations, but Medium's 130 FPS ensures maximum responsiveness.

At 1440p, the High preset at 184 FPS delivers excellent visual fidelity while maintaining frame rates well above display refresh rates for most monitors. Medium at 201 FPS offers a 9% improvement, but High's additional graphical features are worth the modest performance trade-off. Ultra at 147 FPS is also viable, providing a 27% reduction from Medium but still delivering smooth gameplay.

For 1080p users, the Ultra preset at 197 FPS is the clear recommendation. The CPU limitation at this resolution means that even Low settings at 261 FPS offer no practical advantage over Ultra's 197 FPS, as both exceed the refresh rates of virtually all gaming monitors. The 64 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p represents wasted performance headroom, making Ultra the sensible choice for maximum visual quality without sacrificing playability.

The minimum frame rates recorded at Medium settings—193 FPS at 1080p, 171 FPS at 1440p, and 111 FPS at 4K—indicate that the combo maintains consistent performance without significant frame time spikes. The absence of min/max data for other settings suggests stable delivery across the board. For a turn-based tactics game where frame rates above 60 FPS are already excessive, any preset from Medium upward provides an excellent experience, with the choice between them depending on resolution and preference for visual fidelity over raw frame rate headroom.