Hard West

# Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data for Hard West with the AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 shows a clear and consistent scaling pattern as resolution increases. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combo delivers 90 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same settings, the average drops to 57 FPS — a 37% reduction. At 3840x2160, performance falls to 30 FPS, which is a 67% drop from the 1080p figure. This scaling curve is steep and indicates that the GPU is the dominant limiting factor at higher resolutions.

The pattern is even more pronounced at Ultra settings. At 1080p, the combo manages 67 FPS. At 1440p, that falls to 43 FPS — a 36% hit. At 4K, the average plummets to 22 FPS, representing a 67% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result. The consistency of these percentage drops across settings presets suggests that the render resolution is the primary driver of performance changes, rather than any particular graphics feature.

Low settings show a similar trajectory. The 1080p Low result is 143 FPS, which drops to 90 FPS at 1440p and 47 FPS at 4K. The relative decreases here are 37% and 67%, respectively, mirroring the High and Ultra scaling almost exactly. This uniformity in scaling percentages across all three settings presets strongly suggests that the frame rate is bound by the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth as pixel count rises, rather than by CPU-side game logic or draw call overhead.

The Medium preset data includes min and max FPS values, providing additional insight. At 1080p Medium, the average is 117 FPS with a min of 99 FPS and max of 135 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the average drops to 74 FPS (min 63, max 85). At 4K Medium, the average is 39 FPS (min 33, max 45). The ratio between min and max FPS remains fairly consistent around 1.35–1.36 across these resolutions, indicating that the frame time variance scales proportionally with the average frame time. There is no sign of a CPU bottleneck creating erratic frame pacing at lower resolutions.

The overall picture from resolution scaling is that this system is heavily GPU-limited in Hard West. The RTX 2060's performance degrades predictably with pixel count, and the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames at even the highest settings tested. The step from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly a third of the frame rate, and the step to 4K costs another third, which is classic behavior for a mid-range GPU under heavy rasterization load.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 is built on the TU106 chip using a 12 nm process. It features 1920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1680 MHz. Memory is 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, yielding 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The card's pixel rate is 80.64 GPixel/s and texture rate is 201.6 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 6.451 TFLOPS.

In Hard West, the GPU's role is clearly central. The measured FPS data shows that the RTX 2060's memory configuration and compute throughput directly determine the frame rates across all tested resolutions. The 4K Ultra result of 22 FPS is particularly telling — this is a scenario where the 6 GB VRAM buffer and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are stretched thin, and the GPU's 80.64 GPixel/s pixel fill rate cannot keep up with the 8.3 million pixels per frame at 2160p.

The GPU's benchmark percentile of 58 versus all GPUs places it in the upper-middle tier. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (avg score 15283, delta 0%), AMD Radeon 680M (avg score 15270, delta 0.1%), NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (avg score 15199, delta 0.6%), and AMD Radeon RX 7600 (avg score 15171, delta 0.8%). These delta values are all within 1%, indicating that the RTX 2060 sits in a tightly contested performance band. However, in Hard West specifically, the game's modest visual demands mean the GPU can still deliver playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, even if 4K Ultra is out of reach.

The clock behavior of the RTX 2060 is important to interpret. The boost clock of 1680 MHz is the sustained ceiling under load, and in a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, the GPU will likely spend most of its time at or near this boost state during camera pans and unit animations. The game's turn-based nature also means that GPU load can spike during combat scenes with multiple units and particle effects, but the data shows that even in the heaviest 4K Ultra scenario, the GPU maintains a stable 22 FPS average without reported min FPS drops below that figure.

The RTX 2060's 6 GB VRAM capacity is worth noting in the context of Hard West's 4K results. The game was released in 2015, and its texture requirements are not extreme by modern standards. Yet the 4K Ultra average of 22 FPS suggests that the combination of high-resolution rendering and Ultra settings pushes the GPU's memory system to its limits. The 192-bit bus width and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth are adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results indicate that memory bandwidth becomes a constraint at higher pixel counts.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600 provides the processing foundation for this combo. It is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 7000 series, built on Zen 4 architecture (codename Raphael) using a 5 nm process at TSMC. Base clock is 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 5.10 GHz. The CPU has 64 KB L1 cache per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 32 MB shared L3 cache. It supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and 83.2 GB/s bandwidth.

In Hard West, the CPU's role is less demanding than the GPU's, as is typical for turn-based tactics. The game's logic is not heavily threaded, and the Ryzen 5 7600's single-thread performance is strong. The CPU's 3DMark single-thread score is 999, and its Passmark single-thread score is 3910. These figures indicate strong per-core performance that can handle the game's AI and pathfinding calculations without becoming a bottleneck.

The CPU's benchmark data shows it ranks in the 78th percentile versus all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX (avg score 26274, delta 0.2%), AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS (avg score 26402, delta -0.3%), Intel Core i9-11900KF (avg score 26212, delta 0.4%), and AMD Ryzen 5 8540U (avg score 26187, delta 0.5%). These delta values are all under 1%, meaning the 7600 sits in a very tightly contested performance tier. For Hard West, this level of CPU performance is more than sufficient.

The evidence that the CPU is not a limiting factor comes from the resolution scaling data. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 143 FPS. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar frame rates at higher resolutions, since the CPU workload would remain constant regardless of render resolution. Instead, the frame rate drops consistently with increasing pixel count, confirming that the GPU is the constraint. The fact that 1080p Low hits 143 FPS — well above typical display refresh rates — shows the CPU has plenty of headroom to feed the GPU.

The Ryzen 5 7600's multi-thread performance is also relevant for background tasks and any additional game systems. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 12735 and Geekbench multi-core score of 13413 indicate that the CPU can handle multiple parallel workloads without impacting game performance. In a turn-based game where the player may have other applications running, this headroom is beneficial. The CPU's 65 W TDP also suggests efficient operation, though the data pack does not provide thermal throttling metrics for this specific game scenario.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values across settings are as follows: Low averages 143 FPS, Medium averages 117 FPS (min 99, max 135), High averages 90 FPS, and Ultra averages 67 FPS. The step from Low to Medium is a 26 FPS drop (18%), from Medium to High is 27 FPS (23%), and from High to Ultra is 23 FPS (26%). The scaling is relatively even, suggesting that each settings tier adds a similar marginal cost to the GPU.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 90 FPS, Medium at 74 FPS (min 63, max 85), High at 57 FPS, and Ultra at 43 FPS. The percentage drops from 1080p are consistent across settings: Low drops 37%, Medium drops 37%, High drops 37%, and Ultra drops 36%. This uniformity reinforces the conclusion that resolution is the dominant factor in determining performance.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 47 FPS, Medium at 39 FPS (min 33, max 45), High at 30 FPS, and Ultra at 22 FPS. The 4K results show that only Low settings achieve a playable frame rate above 45 FPS. Medium settings hit 39 FPS, which is borderline playable for a turn-based game where precise timing is not critical. High and Ultra fall below 30 FPS, which is generally considered the minimum for acceptable smoothness in any game.

The Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max data across all three resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the range is 99–135 FPS. At 1440p Medium, it narrows to 63–85 FPS. At 4K Medium, it narrows further to 33–45 FPS. The relative spread (max/min) stays around 1.35–1.36, indicating that the frame time distribution scales proportionally with resolution. There are no anomalous spikes or dips in the data that would suggest driver issues or thermal throttling.

Comparing the Low and High presets at each resolution reveals the cost of increased visual fidelity. At 1080p, the difference is 53 FPS (143 vs 90). At 1440p, the difference is 33 FPS (90 vs 57). At 4K, the difference is 17 FPS (47 vs 30). The absolute gap narrows at higher resolutions, but the relative gap remains around 37%, consistent with the resolution scaling pattern.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo of AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 2950 out of 3722 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the lower half of the database. This rank of 2950 out of 3722 corresponds to roughly the 21st percentile of tested combos, meaning about 79% of combinations perform better in this game. This is notably below the individual component percentiles — the CPU ranks in the 78th percentile and the GPU in the 58th percentile.

The discrepancy between component percentiles and the combo's in-game rank suggests that Hard West is particularly demanding on the GPU relative to other games in the database. The RTX 2060's 58th percentile GPU ranking is dragged down by the game's resolution scaling behavior, which heavily penalizes the card at 1440p and 4K. The CPU's strong 78th percentile ranking does not translate into a high combo rank because the game is not CPU-bound.

The combo rank of 2950 out of 3722 means that only 772 tested combinations perform worse than this setup in Hard West. The data shows that the RTX 2060's performance tier is a significant limiting factor — at 4K Ultra, the combo only achieves 22 FPS, which is well below playable standards. Even at 1080p Ultra, the 67 FPS result is modest compared to what higher-end GPUs would deliver.

The gap between the combo's rank and the GPU's percentile underscores the importance of GPU selection for Hard West. The CPU has ample headroom, as evidenced by the consistent resolution scaling, but the GPU's 6 GB VRAM and 192-bit memory bus are insufficient for high-resolution play. This is a case where upgrading the GPU would yield far larger performance gains than upgrading the CPU.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings for this combo depend on the target resolution and frame rate preference. At 1920x1080, all settings presets are playable. Ultra delivers 67 FPS, which exceeds the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. High delivers 90 FPS, offering a comfortable margin for demanding scenes. For players with 60 Hz displays, Ultra at 1080p is the recommended choice, as it provides the best visual quality without sacrificing smoothness.

At 2560x1440, the recommendation is more nuanced. High settings yield 57 FPS, which is close to but slightly below 60 FPS. Medium settings deliver 74 FPS, providing a smoother experience. For players who prioritize frame rate consistency, Medium at 1440p is the better choice. Those who prefer higher visual fidelity and can tolerate occasional dips below 60 FPS may opt for High, which still averages 57 FPS. Ultra at 1440p (43 FPS) is not recommended, as the visual gains over High do not justify the 25% performance penalty.

At 3840x2160, the options are limited. Low settings achieve 47 FPS, which is playable for a turn-based game. Medium settings hit 39 FPS, which is borderline but acceptable given the game's non-twitch gameplay. High (30 FPS) and Ultra (22 FPS) are not recommended for a smooth experience. The data suggests that 4K play is only viable with Low or Medium settings on this hardware.

The Medium preset at 1440p provides the best balance of visual quality and performance for most users. At 74 FPS with a min of 63 FPS, it offers a stable experience with no dips below 60 FPS. This is the sweet spot for this combo. For 1080p users, Ultra at 67 FPS is the recommended preset, as it maximizes visual fidelity while maintaining smooth frame rates. The data does not show any settings preset that causes instability or frame time spikes, so the choice comes down to personal preference for visual quality versus frame rate headroom.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Hard West?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 is the most comfortable resolution, with all settings presets delivering above 67 FPS. At 2560x1440, the combo can still achieve 57 FPS on High and 74 FPS on Medium. At 3840x2160, only Low (47 FPS) and Medium (39 FPS) are playable.

Q: Why is the combo rank lower than the individual component percentiles?

A: The combo ranks 2950 out of 3722 in Hard West, while the CPU ranks in the 78th percentile and the GPU in the 58th percentile. This is because Hard West is heavily GPU-bound, and the RTX 2060's performance at higher resolutions drags down the overall combo ranking.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this game?

A: The resolution scaling data indicates the GPU is the bottleneck. From 1080p to 1440p, frame rates drop by approximately 37% across all settings, and from 1440p to 4K they drop another 67%. This consistent scaling pattern is characteristic of GPU-bound performance.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Hard West?

A: At 4K, only Low settings (47 FPS) and Medium settings (39 FPS) are playable. High settings drop to 30 FPS and Ultra to 22 FPS. For a turn-based game, 39 FPS on Medium may be acceptable, but 4K Ultra is not viable.

Q: What settings preset offers the best experience at 1440p?

A: Medium settings at 1440p deliver 74 FPS on average with a minimum of 63 FPS, ensuring no dips below 60 FPS. High settings average 57 FPS, which is slightly below 60 FPS. Medium is the recommended preset for smooth performance at 1440p.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 compare to its nearest rivals in this context?

A: The RTX 2060's nearest rivals include the GTX 580 (delta 0%), Radeon 680M (delta 0.1%), RTX 3050 OEM (delta 0.6%), and RX 7600 (delta 0.8%). All are within 1% of the RTX 2060's average benchmark score, but in Hard West, the 6 GB VRAM and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth of the RTX 2060 determine its specific performance characteristics.