Hard West

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates across the three tested resolutions reveal a clear and immediate bottleneck: the graphics subsystem. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and Intel Arc B390 produces 55 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440 at the same High preset drops the average to 35 FPS, a reduction of 20 frames. The step to 3840x2160 is even more punishing, with the average falling to 18 FPS. This scaling pattern—roughly halving frame rates as pixel count quadruples—indicates that the Intel Arc B390 is the limiting component, while the CPU has ample headroom.

The data shows a similar proportional decline across all settings tiers. At Low settings, the 1080p result of 87 FPS falls to 55 FPS at 1440p and then to 29 FPS at 4K. Medium settings go from 71 FPS at 1080p to 45 FPS at 1440p and 24 FPS at 2160p. The Ultra preset, which is the most demanding, starts at 41 FPS on 1080p, drops to 26 FPS on 1440p, and bottoms out at 14 FPS on 4K. These numbers suggest that the game's rendering load scales almost linearly with resolution, and the Intel Arc B390's compute resources are saturated well before the CPU becomes a factor.

What does this mean for the limiting component? The fact that even at Low settings the 4K resolution only achieves 29 FPS—barely above the threshold for playable—points to a GPU that simply lacks the fill rate and shading power for high pixel counts. The Intel Arc B390 has 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 render output units. Its pixel rate is 60.00 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 120.0 GTexel/s. These figures, while modest, are enough to handle 1080p reasonably well but are overwhelmed by the 8.3 million pixels of 4K. The frame rate deltas between resolutions are consistent across all settings, confirming that the GPU is the sole constraint in this pairing.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the optimal experience depends heavily on the target resolution. For 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 71 FPS on average with a minimum of 61 FPS and a maximum of 82 FPS. This is the sweet spot: it offers a 29% improvement over High's 55 FPS while maintaining a frame time consistency that avoids noticeable stutter. The Low preset at 87 FPS is smoother but sacrifices visual fidelity for a 22% gain over Medium, which may not be worth the graphical downgrade for a turn-based tactics game where visual clarity aids readability. Ultra at 41 FPS is playable but falls below the 60 FPS threshold that many users prefer, and the 30 FPS gap between Low and Ultra suggests the preset is too demanding for this GPU.

At 2560x1440, the situation tightens. Medium provides 45 FPS with a minimum of 38 FPS and a maximum of 52 FPS, which is the only preset that stays above the 30 FPS playability floor while offering a balanced visual package. High at 35 FPS is workable for a slower-paced tactics game, but the 10 FPS drop from Medium may introduce perceptible sluggishness during camera pans. Low at 55 FPS is the smoothest option, but users should weigh whether the reduced detail level is acceptable for a game that relies on environmental storytelling and character models. Ultra at 26 FPS is not recommended, as it dips below the 30 FPS threshold and will feel unresponsive during unit selection and cursor movement.

For 3840x2160, none of the presets reach a fully comfortable level. Low at 29 FPS is the only option that approaches playability, while Medium at 24 FPS and High at 18 FPS are clearly below acceptable ranges. Ultra at 14 FPS is effectively a slideshow. The recommendation for 4K is to use Low settings if resolution is non-negotiable, but the data strongly suggests that 1080p or 1440p with Medium settings provides the best balance of frame rate and visual quality for this hardware combination. The measured minimums for Medium at 1080p (61 FPS) and 1440p (38 FPS) show that the frame pacing is stable, which is critical for turn-based tactics where input latency can affect decision-making.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is a low-power integrated graphics solution with a 80 W TDP, built on Intel's 3 nm process with the Xe3-LPG architecture. Its clock behavior is notable: the base clock is 300 MHz, but the boost clock reaches 2500 MHz. This wide boost range indicates that the GPU can scale its performance significantly when thermal and power headroom allows, but in a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, sustained loads may keep clocks closer to the lower end of the range. The memory configuration is "System Shared," meaning the GPU relies on the CPU's DDR5 memory rather than dedicated VRAM. The memory bandwidth is listed as "System Dependent," which means performance is tied to the Ryzen 5 8400F's dual-channel memory bus rated at 83.2 GB/s.

In practice, the shared memory architecture is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows the GPU to access a large pool of memory, which is beneficial for texture-heavy scenes. On the other hand, the bandwidth is shared with the CPU, and in a game like Hard West that involves many on-screen characters and environmental details, memory contention can limit performance. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 benchmark score of 1482 places this GPU in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463, 1.3% faster), the NVIDIA GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% faster), and the NVIDIA GeForce GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% faster). These are all entry-level mobile or OEM parts from over a decade ago, which contextualizes the B390's position as a basic integrated solution rather than a discrete gaming GPU.

The GPU's shading resources—1536 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 24 ROPs—produce a FP32 performance of 7.680 TFLOPS. While this is respectable for an integrated part, it is insufficient for high-resolution gaming. The measured FPS data confirms this: even at 1080p Low, the GPU achieves 87 FPS, but this drops to 41 FPS at Ultra, showing that the shading units are the primary constraint. The 12 ray tracing cores are present but irrelevant for this game, which was released in 2015 and does not support ray tracing. The DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 API compatibility are modern but unused by Hard West's legacy engine.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the full range of settings yields the following averages: Low at 87 FPS, Medium at 71 FPS (minimum 61, maximum 82), High at 55 FPS, and Ultra at 41 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 46 FPS, which is a 53% reduction in performance. This indicates that the Ultra preset imposes nearly double the rendering cost of Low, likely due to increased shadow resolution, texture filtering, and post-processing effects. The Medium preset's minimum of 61 FPS is particularly telling: it shows that even during complex scenes with multiple units and environmental effects, the frame rate stays above 60 FPS, providing a consistent experience.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are: Low at 55 FPS, Medium at 45 FPS (minimum 38, maximum 52), High at 35 FPS, and Ultra at 26 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 29 FPS, a 53% drop that mirrors the 1080p scaling. The Medium preset's minimum of 38 FPS is above the 30 FPS playability floor, but the 7 FPS delta between minimum and maximum suggests some scene-to-scene variance. High at 35 FPS is borderline, and Ultra at 26 FPS falls below the acceptable threshold for smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low at 29 FPS, Medium at 24 FPS (minimum 20, maximum 27), High at 18 FPS, and Ultra at 14 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 20 FPS is concerning, as it indicates that even the mid-tier setting can dip below the 30 FPS threshold in demanding scenes. The 15 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is proportionally similar to the other resolutions, confirming that the GPU's performance ceiling is consistently hit regardless of settings. The maximum FPS at 4K Medium is 27, which is still below the 30 FPS floor, meaning that no settings combination at this resolution achieves smooth gameplay.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and Intel Arc B390 ranks 2614 out of 2949 tested combos in Hard West. This places it in the bottom 11% of all configurations, reflecting the GPU's limitations rather than the CPU's capabilities. The rank is driven almost entirely by the GPU, as the Ryzen 5 8400F's benchmark scores are far more competitive. In the GPU's own percentile ranking, it sits at 9th percentile, while the CPU sits at 77th percentile. This disparity underscores the bottleneck: the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU far more data than the GPU can process.

To contextualize the combo's rank, consider the CPU's nearest rivals. The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F has an average score of 24964, just 0.2% below the 8400F's 25005. The Intel Core i7-11850H scores 24935 (0.3% lower), and the Intel Core i7-13620H scores 24911 (0.4% lower). The AMD EPYC 9474F scores 25103, which is 0.4% higher. These deltas are negligible, meaning the CPU is effectively on par with mid-range desktop and mobile parts from recent generations. However, the GPU's nearest rivals—the GT 520MX, GeForce 800M, GT 625 OEM, and GT 710—are all ancient parts with scores between 1443 and 1463, within 2.7% of the B390's 1482. This means the GPU is performing at the level of a 2011-era entry-level discrete card, which is why the combo ranks so low.

The data suggests that if the same CPU were paired with a modern mid-range GPU, the combo's rank would improve dramatically. But as configured, the Intel Arc B390 drags the overall performance down to the bottom decile. For Hard West, a turn-based tactics game that is not graphically intensive by modern standards, this rank indicates that the game is playable at lower resolutions but far from optimized for this hardware.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 (Phoenix) architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 4 nm process. It has a base clock of 4.20 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 16 MB of shared L3. This configuration is well-suited for gaming, as the high boost clock and 12 threads provide ample single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. In Hard West, which is a turn-based tactics game that does not heavily utilize multi-threading, the CPU's single-thread performance is what matters most.

The CPU's benchmark scores reinforce this. In Cinebench R23, it scores 20851 in multi-core and 2943 in single-core. The single-core score is particularly strong, placing it in the upper echelon of desktop processors. In 3DMark, it scores 951 in single-thread and 6165 in max threads. The PassMark single-thread score is 3685, with a multi-thread score of 24389. These numbers show that the CPU is not the limiting factor in this combo. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 6091 is close to the max-thread score of 6165, indicating that the 12 threads are well-utilized and the processor does not throttle under load.

In the context of Hard West, the CPU's role is to handle game logic, AI decision-making, and unit pathfinding. The 6 cores and 12 threads are more than sufficient for these tasks, and the high boost clock ensures that the main game thread runs at full speed. The measured FPS data supports this: the frame rates at 1080p Low (87 FPS) and Medium (71 FPS) are high enough that the CPU is clearly not the bottleneck. Even at 4K, where the GPU is severely constrained, the CPU is likely idling, as the frame rates are driven entirely by GPU rendering limits.

The CPU's memory support for DDR5 with a dual-channel bus and 83.2 GB/s bandwidth is also relevant. Since the GPU uses system shared memory, the CPU's memory controller must handle both game data and GPU frame buffer traffic. The 83.2 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the increased texture and buffer sizes may strain the memory subsystem. However, the fact that the FPS drops are consistent with GPU compute limits suggests that memory bandwidth is not a significant additional constraint. The CPU's percentile rank of 77th among all CPUs further confirms that it is a competent gaming processor, and its nearest rivals all score within 0.4% of its average, meaning there is no meaningful performance gap.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Arc B390 capable of running Hard West at 1080p?

A: Yes, but only at lower settings. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 87 FPS, Medium achieves 71 FPS, and High achieves 55 FPS. The Ultra preset drops to 41 FPS, which is playable but below the 60 FPS threshold. The Medium preset with its 61 FPS minimum is the recommended balance.

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

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 with Medium settings provides the best experience, averaging 71 FPS with a minimum of 61 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium averages 45 FPS with a minimum of 38 FPS, which is playable but less smooth. At 3840x2160, even Low settings only reach 29 FPS, which is below the playability threshold.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The B390 scores 1482 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, which is 1.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463), 1.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce 800M (1460), and 2.5% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GT 625 OEM (1446). These are all entry-level parts from over a decade ago, indicating the B390's performance tier.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 8400F bottleneck the Intel Arc B390 in this game?

A: No. The CPU's single-thread score of 2943 in Cinebench R23 and the high frame rates at 1080p (87 FPS on Low) indicate the CPU has ample headroom. The bottleneck is the GPU, as evidenced by the consistent FPS drops across all resolutions when settings are increased.

Q: What is the CPU's performance relative to its nearest rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 8400F has an average benchmark score of 25005. The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F scores 24964 (0.2% lower), the Intel Core i7-11850H scores 24935 (0.3% lower), and the Intel Core i7-13620H scores 24911 (0.4% lower). The AMD EPYC 9474F scores 25103 (0.4% higher). These differences are negligible.

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

A: The data shows that 4K performance is below playable thresholds across all presets. The Low preset averages 29 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 20 FPS, High averages 18 FPS, and Ultra averages 14 FPS. None of these meet the 30 FPS minimum for smooth gameplay.