Hard West

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination lands at rank 105 out of 1,699 tested combos in Hard West. This placement puts the pairing in the top 6.2% of all configurations evaluated for this turn-based tactics title. The rank reflects a system that is overwhelmingly capable of handling the game's demands, though it is not the absolute peak configuration possible. The high percentile standing is driven by the GPU's substantial processing power, which at lower resolutions becomes the primary engine for the game's high frame rates, while the CPU's strong single-threaded performance ensures the turn-based logic and unit actions are processed without bottlenecking the output.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, and the benchmark data confirms its massive headroom in Hard West. The GPU is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 10,240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output pipelines. It operates at a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2550 MHz, with a memory clock of 1438 MHz running on 16 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 256-bit bus. This configuration yields a memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for the game's static, turn-based scenes.

The GPU's compute capabilities are extensive, with an FP32 throughput of 52.22 TFLOPS and a texture rate of 816.0 GTexel/s. Its pixel rate of 285.6 GPixel/s ensures that the game's stylized, 2D-heavy visuals are rasterized with ease. In terms of raw benchmark scores, the RTX 4080 SUPER achieves a Passmark G3D score of 34,245 and a Geekbench OpenCL score of 246,994. These numbers place it at the 88th percentile of all GPUs, with its average benchmark score of 53,610 sitting just 0.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and 2.9% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti.

In Hard West, the GPU's role is to push frame rates to extreme levels, especially at 1080p and 1440p. The data shows that the RTX 4080 SUPER is the primary driver of performance, as the game's turn-based nature does not create heavy CPU physics or AI loads. The GPU's high VRAM capacity and bandwidth are not stressed by this title, but they ensure that the game runs flawlessly without any texture streaming hitches. The card's performance is so high that even at Ultra settings, the frame rates remain well above the threshold for smooth gameplay, highlighting that the GPU is not the limiting factor in most scenarios.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F serves as the supporting component, and its role in Hard West is to maintain a steady frame pacing for the game's logical operations. This CPU is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 8000 series, built on the Zen 4 (Phoenix) architecture using a 4 nm process. It has a base clock of 4.20 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 16 MB shared L3 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache per core. The CPU's memory bandwidth is 83.2 GB/s, and it supports DDR5 memory over a dual-channel bus.

The CPU's benchmark performance is solid, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20,851 and a single-core score of 2,943. Its Passmark multithread score is 24,530, and its single-thread score is 3,684. These figures place the CPU at the 82nd percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 25,064. This puts it in direct contention with the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (delta 0%) and just 0.3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F. The 8400F's single-thread performance is particularly relevant for Hard West, as turn-based tactics games often have game logic that runs on a single primary thread.

In practice, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are more than adequate for Hard West. The game does not require massive multi-threaded scaling, so the CPU's strong per-core performance ensures that action commands and enemy AI turns are processed without delays. The data indicates that the CPU is not a bottleneck at any resolution tested, as the frame rates scale consistently with GPU load rather than hitting a CPU-imposed ceiling. The 65W TDP and 4 nm process also mean the CPU runs efficiently, allowing the GPU to operate without thermal throttling from a shared cooling solution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates for this combo reveal a clear performance hierarchy across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the system delivers exceptional results. On Low settings, the game runs at an average of 264.1 FPS. Increasing to Medium drops this to 245 FPS, while High settings produce 204.5 FPS. At Ultra, the average remains high at 157.2 FPS. These numbers show that even at the most demanding 1080p settings, the system is far from being stressed, with the frame rate staying well above the refresh rate of most monitors.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains impressive but begins to show the GPU's workload. Low settings at 1440p yield an average of 208 FPS, while Medium produces 167 FPS. High settings drop to 131.2 FPS, and Ultra settles at 96.3 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p is consistent, with the frame rate dropping by roughly 20-25% across all settings, indicating that the GPU is still the primary driver and has ample headroom.

At 3840x2160, the system's performance is still strong but becomes more moderate. Low settings at 4K produce 110.2 FPS, while Medium drops to 91.2 FPS. High settings yield 69.2 FPS, and Ultra falls to 52.4 FPS. These figures demonstrate that the RTX 4080 SUPER can handle 4K Ultra in Hard West, but the frame rate is no longer in the triple digits. The data shows a smooth degradation from Low to Ultra, with no erratic spikes or drops, which indicates stable performance across the entire settings range.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling data shows a predictable and linear pattern, with the frame rate dropping as resolution increases. From 1080p Low (264.1 FPS) to 1440p Low (208 FPS), there is a 21.2% decrease. From 1440p Low to 4K Low (110.2 FPS), the drop is 47%. This pattern is consistent across all settings levels. For High settings, the frame rate drops from 204.5 FPS at 1080p to 131.2 FPS at 1440p (a 35.8% decrease), and then to 69.2 FPS at 4K (a 47.3% decrease from 1440p).

The scaling behavior reveals the limiting component. At 1080p, the system is likely CPU-bound in some scenarios, as the frame rates are extremely high and the GPU has significant untapped potential. However, the data does not show a hard CPU cap, as the frame rates continue to rise from High to Low settings at 1080p. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor, as the frame rates drop more steeply with each resolution increase. The gap between 1080p Ultra (157.2 FPS) and 4K Ultra (52.4 FPS) is a 66.7% reduction, which is a strong indicator that the RTX 4080 SUPER is being fully utilized at higher resolutions.

The fact that the frame rate at 4K High (69.2 FPS) is still above the 60 FPS threshold means the combo is well-suited for high-refresh 1440p gaming and capable of 4K gaming at high settings. The resolution scaling also shows that the CPU is not a bottleneck at 4K, as the performance drop is proportional to the increase in pixel count. For players targeting 1080p, the system is overkill, but for those with 1440p or 4K displays, the performance envelope is well-matched to the hardware. The data confirms that this is a balanced pairing where the GPU's massive compute resources are the primary driver of the game's visuals, with the CPU providing sufficient support to avoid any frame pacing issues.