Hard West

Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015, interacts with modern hardware in a predictable but informative way. The measured data for the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination reveals a system with substantial headroom, where the choice of settings has a more pronounced impact on frame rates than in more demanding genres. The benchmark results indicate a configuration that can comfortably dominate this title, with the primary challenge being the selection of a preset that balances visual fidelity against the game's surprisingly high frame rate ceiling.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data across various presets and resolutions points to the High preset as the optimal balance for this pairing. At 1080p, the High preset delivers an average of 177.4 FPS, which is a significant 44.6 FPS drop from the Low preset’s 234.8 FPS but still far above the threshold for smooth gameplay. The jump to Ultra at 1080p incurs a further substantial penalty, dropping the average to 132.9 FPS. The performance cost of moving from High to Ultra is disproportionately large compared to the incremental visual gains typically offered in a game of this era, making High the more efficient choice.

This pattern is consistent at higher resolutions. At 1440p, the High preset maintains an impressive 111.6 FPS, while the Ultra preset falls to 84.5 FPS. The data suggests that High provides a robust experience without the performance overhead of Ultra. Even at 4K, the High preset achieves a playable 63.1 FPS, whereas Ultra drops to 43.2 FPS, a level that may be less desirable for consistent frame pacing. For users with high-refresh-rate 1080p or 1440p displays, the High preset is the clear recommendation, as it delivers frame rates that can fully utilize such panels while avoiding the diminishing returns of the Ultra settings. The Medium preset offers a middle ground, but the data shows that High is merely 40.6 FPS slower than Medium at 1440p (145.4 vs 111.6 FPS), a trade-off that favors the higher visual quality.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700, with its 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, is a capable processor that is unlikely to bottleneck the GPU in a turn-based tactics game. Its performance profile, as seen in benchmark scores, shows a strong multi-threaded capability, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20655 and a Passmark multithread score of 24303. However, Hard West’s genre and age mean that it is not a title that scales heavily with core count. The single-thread performance is more relevant here, and the processor’s Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2916 and 3DMark single-thread score of 901 indicate solid per-core performance that can handle the game's logic and AI calculations without issue.

The CPU's boost clock of 4.60 GHz and base clock of 3.70 GHz are ample for this workload. The data shows that the processor sits in the 84th percentile when compared to all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 27220. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i9-9900K, which is only 0.7% faster, and the Intel Core i7-12700H at 0.8% faster. These negligible deltaPct values confirm that the Ryzen 7 5700 is positioned as a high-performance part that should not be a limiting factor. In the context of this game, the CPU's role is to maintain a stable baseline, ensuring that frame times are consistent. The high frame rates observed at 1080p, even with the Low preset at 234.8 FPS, suggest that the CPU is more than capable of feeding the GPU with enough data, as the bottleneck at these settings is likely the GPU's rendering speed rather than any CPU limitation.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER is the dominant component in this configuration for Hard West. Its performance is the primary driver of the frame rates seen in the measured data. The GPU’s 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for a game from 2015, even at 4K resolution. The GPU's boost clock of 2475 MHz and its Ada Lovelace architecture ensure that it can process the game's geometry and effects with ease. The benchmark results show that the GPU is in the 84th percentile compared to all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 42576. Its nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA RTX A6000 and AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE, are within a 0.3% deltaPct of its score, indicating that it is a top-tier performer in synthetic tests.

The GPU's role becomes clear when examining the FPS scaling. At 1080p with the Low preset, the average FPS is 234.8, which is a very high number. This suggests that the GPU is being pushed to its limits in a lighter workload, but the frame rate is still far from being CPU-bound. As settings increase to High and Ultra, the FPS drops to 177.4 and 132.9, respectively. This drop is the GPU's rendering load increasing. The 4K data further emphasizes this point. The Low preset at 4K yields 94.9 FPS, while the High preset yields 63.1 FPS and Ultra drops to 43.2 FPS. The GPU is clearly the component that dictates performance, as the CPU's role is less demanding. The RTX 4070 SUPER's 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is more than enough to handle the game's shaders, and its 80 ROPs are likely the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the pixel fill rate becomes more critical.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ranks 326 out of 1699 tested combos in this game. This places it in the top 20% of all tested configurations, which is a strong showing given the game's age. The data indicates that this pairing is overkill for Hard West, as it is likely that many lower-tier components would also achieve high frame rates. However, the ranking of 326 suggests that there is a significant number of more powerful combinations that can push frame rates even higher, particularly at 4K Ultra settings, where this combo's 43.2 FPS is a limiting factor.

The high rank is a direct result of the GPU's capability. The CPU's performance, while solid, is not the differentiator here. The benchmark data shows that the CPU's average score of 27220 is only 0.7% higher than its nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-9900K, which is a much older part. This suggests that the CPU is not a limiting factor, and the combo's rank is primarily determined by the RTX 4070 SUPER's ability to render frames. The fact that this combo is not in the top 100 is likely due to the GPU being paired with a CPU that, while strong, does not have the absolute highest single-thread performance that could be paired with it. Still, for a game like Hard West, the 326th rank out of 1699 combos confirms the system's ability to deliver high frame rates at most settings, with the only caveat being the demanding 4K Ultra preset.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across resolutions shows a clear and expected trend: performance degrades as resolution increases, and this degradation is more pronounced at higher settings. At the Low preset, the average FPS scales from 234.8 at 1080p to 182.5 at 1440p and 94.9 at 4K. This represents a 22.3% drop in FPS from 1080p to 1440p and a further 48.0% drop from 1440p to 4K. This scaling suggests that the GPU is becoming more strained as the pixel count increases, but the frame rates remain very high, indicating that the GPU is not fully saturated at 1080p.

The High preset shows a similar pattern, with FPS dropping from 177.4 at 1080p to 111.6 at 1440p and 63.1 at 4K. The percentage drops are 37.1% and 43.5%, respectively. The severity of the drop from 1080p to 1440p is notable, indicating that the GPU is starting to work harder. At the Ultra preset, the scaling is even more pronounced, with FPS dropping from 132.9 at 1080p to 84.5 at 1440p and 43.2 at 4K. This is a 36.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 48.9% drop from 1440p to 4K. The data indicates that the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions, as the CPU is not showing any signs of creating a bottleneck. The fact that the 4K Ultra preset is the only configuration that falls below 60 FPS suggests that this is a scenario that pushes the RTX 4070 SUPER to its limits. The resolution scaling data confirms that the GPU is the primary factor in this combo's performance, with the CPU providing ample support.