Hard West

# Hard West Performance Analysis: AMD Ryzen 5 7500F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

Hard West presents a fascinating case study in how a turn-based tactics title from 2015 interacts with modern high-end hardware. The measured data reveals that this AMD Ryzen 5 7500F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination delivers exceptional frame rates across all tested configurations, but the scaling patterns expose a workload that becomes increasingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions while remaining remarkably CPU-efficient at 1080p. The combo ranks 404th out of 1699 tested combinations, placing it in the upper quartile of system pairings, which suggests that this pairing hits a sweet spot for the game's engine demands.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals the shifting bottleneck. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the system produces 159.3 FPS, but at 2560x1440 this falls to 102.4 FPS — a reduction of roughly 36%. Pushing further to 3840x2160 yields 55.2 FPS, which represents a 65% decline from the 1080p figure. This pattern indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is likely the limiting factor, as the RTX 4070's substantial compute resources cannot be fully utilized when the resolution places less demand on the graphics pipeline.

The scaling behavior across settings at each resolution tells a similar story. At 4K, the gap between Low (85.9 FPS) and Ultra (42.6 FPS) is exactly 2x, showing that the GPU is doing heavy lifting as settings increase. At 1440p, the Low-to-Ultra spread runs from 163.9 FPS down to 75.3 FPS, while at 1080p, Low hits 254.2 FPS and Ultra still manages 118.5 FPS. The fact that 1080p Ultra exceeds 1440p High (118.5 vs 102.4 FPS) suggests that resolution scaling has a more pronounced impact on frame rate than preset quality, which is typical for a game where pixel throughput dominates.

The data implies that the RTX 4070 begins to hit its stride at 1440p, where the 102.4 FPS High result indicates a balanced workload. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, particularly at Ultra where the frame rate drops to 42.6 FPS — still playable but far from the fluid feel of lower resolutions. The 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 7500F with its 5.00 GHz boost clock appears sufficient to feed the GPU at 1080p, but the scaling curve suggests that resolution, not CPU capability, dictates the ceiling.

Settings Recommendations

Interpreting the measured rows, the Medium preset emerges as the most compelling choice for balanced performance. At 1440p, Medium delivers 134.2 FPS compared to High's 102.4 FPS — a 31% improvement that comes with only a modest visual step down. At 1080p, Medium's 209.6 FPS versus High's 159.3 FPS represents a 31.6% gain, making it ideal for high-refresh-rate displays. The Ultra preset, while visually superior, extracts a heavy toll: at 1440p it drops to 75.3 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 42.6 FPS, which may introduce perceptible stutter in a tactics game where smooth camera pans matter.

For 4K users, the Low preset at 85.9 FPS is surprisingly viable, and even Medium at 71 FPS maintains respectable smoothness. However, the jump from Medium to High at 4K costs 22% of the frame rate (71 to 55.2 FPS), suggesting that High is the upper limit for a consistent 60 FPS experience at this resolution. The data shows that Medium offers the best compromise across all three resolutions: it never drops below 71 FPS even at 4K, while providing a substantial improvement over Low's visual quality.

The 1080p Ultra result of 118.5 FPS indicates that even the most demanding preset remains highly playable at this resolution, though the 209.6 FPS Medium figure better leverages high-refresh monitors. Given that Hard West is a turn-based tactics title where frame rate spikes matter less than strategic clarity, the Medium preset appears to be the sweet spot — it maintains high frame rates across all resolutions while avoiding the diminishing returns of Ultra.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F, built on the Zen 4 architecture with a 5 nm process, brings 6 cores and 12 threads to this pairing. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 5.00 GHz, combined with 32 MB of shared L3 cache, provide the kind of single-threaded responsiveness that older game engines often depend on. The CPU's benchmark scores reinforce this: a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3218 and multi-core score of 22799 indicate strong per-thread performance that matters for games with limited thread scaling.

Hard West, being a 2015 title, likely cannot fully utilize 12 threads, which explains why the 1080p results show such high frame rates — the CPU has ample headroom. The 3DMark single-thread score of 974 and 2-thread score of 1902 suggest that the CPU's architecture excels in lightly-threaded workloads, which aligns with the game's turn-based nature where most processing happens in discrete bursts. The Ryzen 5 7500F sits at the 82nd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 24993, placing it slightly above the Intel Core i7-11850H (24974, +0.1%) and just below the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (25057, -0.3%).

The fact that 1080p Low produces 254.2 FPS — more than double the 4K High result — strongly suggests that at lower resolutions, the CPU is not the primary constraint. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect similar frame rates across resolutions at the same settings, but the data shows a clear resolution-dependent drop. This indicates that the Ryzen 5 7500F provides more than enough processing power for Hard West, leaving the GPU as the determining factor for performance scaling.

FAQ

Q: Is the Ryzen 5 7500F powerful enough to avoid bottlenecking the RTX 4070 in Hard West?

A: Yes. The 1080p Low result of 254.2 FPS demonstrates that the CPU can push frame rates far beyond what the GPU can render at higher resolutions, indicating the CPU is not a limiting factor in this game.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 4K with High settings?

A: The measured average is 55.2 FPS at 3840x2160 with High settings. This is below the 60 FPS threshold but remains playable for a turn-based tactics game.

Q: How does the Medium preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: Medium delivers 134.2 FPS compared to High's 102.4 FPS, a 31% improvement in frame rate. This makes Medium preferable for smoother camera movement and responsiveness.

Q: Does the RTX 4070's 12 GB VRAM become a limitation at any tested configuration?

A: The data shows no VRAM-related performance anomalies. The 4K Ultra result of 42.6 FPS is consistent with GPU compute limits rather than memory capacity issues, given the game's 2015 release and modest texture requirements.

Q: Is the Ultra preset worth the performance cost at 1080p?

A: Ultra at 1080p yields 118.5 FPS versus Medium's 209.6 FPS — a 43% reduction. Given the turn-based nature, the visual upgrade may not justify the frame rate loss for most users.

Q: How does this combo rank relative to other tested systems?

A: It ranks 404th out of 1699 combinations, placing it in the top 24% of tested configs. This indicates a strong pairing for this game, though not an extreme outlier.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process, provides the rendering muscle for this pairing. Its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus delivers 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, while the boost clock of 2475 MHz and 5888 shading units handle pixel throughput. The GPU's benchmark results show a PassMark G3D score of 26927 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3854, placing it at the 81st percentile of all GPUs.

The RTX 4070's nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37507, -0.6% delta) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38135, -2.2% delta), showing that this desktop card sits in a competitive performance tier. In Hard West, the GPU's role becomes apparent in the resolution scaling: the 2x difference between Low (85.9 FPS) and Ultra (42.6 FPS) at 4K highlights how the card's compute resources are stretched by higher settings. At 1080p, the GPU has ample headroom, as evidenced by the 254.2 FPS Low result, but the 118.5 FPS Ultra figure shows that even this powerful card faces diminishing returns with maxed settings.

The 64 ROPs and 184 TMUs of the RTX 4070 contribute to its pixel and texture fill rates of 158.4 GPixel/s and 455.4 GTexel/s respectively, which are more than adequate for a 2015 title. However, the 4K Ultra result of 42.6 FPS suggests that Hard West's Ultra preset may include effects that scale heavily with resolution, such as high-quality shadows or post-processing, which tax the GPU's FP32 throughput of 29.15 TFLOPS. The data implies that for this game, the RTX 4070 is best utilized at 1440p, where it can maintain high frame rates without being pushed to its limits.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system produces its highest frame rates across all settings. Low settings yield 254.2 FPS, Medium drops to 209.6 FPS, High reduces further to 159.3 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 118.5 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 53% reduction in frame rate, with each preset step costing roughly 37-47 FPS.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers scale down proportionally. Low delivers 163.9 FPS, Medium achieves 134.2 FPS, High manages 102.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 75.3 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra spread here is 54%, nearly identical to the 1080p pattern, indicating consistent scaling behavior.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates compress significantly. Low produces 85.9 FPS, Medium drops to 71 FPS, High reaches 55.2 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 42.6 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra reduction is 50%, similar to lower resolutions, but the absolute values are much lower. The 1440p High result of 102.4 FPS is nearly double the 4K High figure, while 1080p Ultra at 118.5 FPS exceeds 1440p High, demonstrating that resolution has a larger impact on performance than preset quality in this game.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination ranks 404th out of 1699 tested combos in Hard West, positioning it in the 76th percentile of system pairings. This is a strong showing, though not exceptional — the game's age means many lower-end CPUs paired with high-end GPUs can achieve similar results. The ranking suggests that this combo outperforms roughly three-quarters of tested systems while being surpassed by the top 24%, which likely includes configurations with even more powerful GPUs or CPUs with higher single-thread performance.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 82 and the GPU's percentile of 81 both indicate above-average hardware, but the combo rank of 404/1699 suggests that the game's performance ceiling is more dependent on the GPU than the CPU. This is consistent with the resolution scaling data, which shows the GPU becoming the bottleneck at 4K. The Ryzen 5 7500F's nearest rivals — the Intel Core i7-11850H (0.1% faster) and AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX (0.4% faster) — have nearly identical average scores, confirming that the CPU provides adequate performance for this workload. The combo's rank implies that while this pairing is well-suited for Hard West, the game's modest requirements mean that even mid-range hardware can achieve comparable frame rates, making this configuration a sensible but not extravagant choice for the title.