Hard West

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a commanding performance profile in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. With 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and the Ada Lovelace architecture, this combo produces frame rates that span from highly playable at 4K to exceptionally fluid at 1080p. The measured data across twelve distinct resolution and settings combinations reveals a system that consistently exceeds the 60 FPS threshold at 1440p and approaches triple-digit averages at 1080p, positioning it as a formidable pairing for this genre.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data indicates that the High preset provides the most balanced experience across all tested resolutions. At 3840x2160, High yields an average of 51.6 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a turn-based tactics game where smooth camera panning matters. However, the Medium preset at 4K delivers 70 FPS, offering a substantial improvement while maintaining visual fidelity that is more than adequate for this title’s art style. For users prioritizing a locked 60 FPS experience at 4K, Medium is the clear choice, as it sits comfortably above the threshold while Ultra drops to a sub-60 average of 37.9 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the High preset achieves 104.8 FPS, which is smooth enough for any gameplay scenario, while Medium reaches 134 FPS and Low hits 160.9 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p produces 78.8 FPS, still exceeding the 60 FPS target but with diminishing returns on visual quality for a game of this era. The sweet spot at 1440p is High, as it offers a near-100 FPS average without the unnecessary overhead of Ultra. At 1920x1080, all presets exceed 120 FPS, with High at 160.7 FPS, Medium at 210.4 FPS, and Low at 247 FPS. Even Ultra at 1080p maintains a robust 122.1 FPS, meaning users with high-refresh-rate monitors can freely select any preset without compromising playability.

Given the data, the High preset at 1440p offers the best overall experience, combining a 104.8 FPS average with high visual quality. For 4K display owners, Medium is recommended to secure a 70 FPS average, while those on 1080p panels can confidently use Ultra for the maximum visual experience at 122.1 FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 serves as the primary performance driver in this configuration, and its specifications strongly influence the measured results. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory capacity is ample for Hard West’s requirements, as the game’s turn-based tactical scenes do not demand excessive texture streaming or large asset loads. The 21 Gbps effective memory clock ensures that bandwidth constraints are unlikely to be a bottleneck at any tested resolution.

The GPU’s clock behavior is notable, with a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz. The Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process, allows the RTX 4070 to sustain high clock speeds under load, which directly contributes to the strong frame rates observed. The 5888 shading units and 184 texture mapping units provide substantial compute throughput, with a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s. These figures explain why the GPU can push 247 FPS at 1080p Low and still manage 51.6 FPS at 4K High, as the rendering workload scales predictably with resolution.

The RTX 4070’s 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is more than sufficient for a game released in 2015, which does not employ modern ray tracing or DLSS features. The GPU’s DirectX 12 Ultimate support is backward-compatible, ensuring full compatibility with Hard West’s rendering pipeline. The 200 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate a power-efficient part that runs cool under sustained load, though these characteristics do not directly appear in the FPS data. The GPU’s percentile rank of 81 among all GPUs, based on an average benchmark score of 37283, places it in the upper tier, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (deltaPct -0.6) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (deltaPct -2.2), though these comparisons are synthetic benchmarks rather than in-game results.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Hard West, this pairing of the Ryzen 7 5800X and RTX 4070 achieves a combo rank of 439 out of 1699 combos. This places it in the top 26th percentile of all tested configurations, indicating that it outperforms roughly three-quarters of the systems evaluated in this game. The rank reflects the combined capabilities of the CPU and GPU, though the game’s turn-based nature means that the GPU likely carries more weight in determining frame rates.

The Ryzen 7 5800X, with its 8 cores and 16 threads, provides ample processing power for the game’s AI calculations and pathfinding, but the measured FPS data shows clear scaling with resolution and settings that is characteristic of GPU-bound workloads. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 27606 places it at the 84th percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 (deltaPct 0.3) and Intel Core i5-12600KF (deltaPct -0.8). This suggests the CPU is not a limiting factor in Hard West, as even the most demanding 1080p Ultra scenario at 122.1 FPS does not stress the processor to its limits.

The combo rank of 439 indicates that while this system is strong, it is not at the very top of the charts, likely because higher-end GPUs such as the RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XTX would deliver even higher frame rates at 4K Ultra. However, for the vast majority of users, this rank translates to a smooth experience across all tested settings, and the data confirms that the RTX 4070 is well-matched to the Ryzen 7 5800X for this title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system demonstrates exceptional performance across all settings. The Low preset achieves an average of 247 FPS, which is near the practical limit for most displays and indicates that the CPU is not bottlenecking at this resolution. The Medium preset yields 210.4 FPS, a 14.8% reduction from Low, while High drops to 160.7 FPS, a 23.6% reduction from Medium. The Ultra preset produces 122.1 FPS, which is a 24% reduction from High. This scaling pattern shows that each settings tier imposes a consistent performance penalty, with the gap between Medium and High being the most significant single step.

At 2560x1440, the performance remains robust. Low delivers 160.9 FPS, which is a 34.9% decrease from the 1080p Low result, illustrating the impact of increased pixel count. Medium achieves 134 FPS, a 16.7% drop from Low, while High reaches 104.8 FPS, a 21.8% reduction from Medium. Ultra produces 78.8 FPS, a 24.8% decrease from High. The relative penalties between settings are similar to those at 1080p, confirming that the GPU is the primary performance limiter as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the system starts to show its limits. Low yields 84.6 FPS, a 47.4% decrease from the 1440p Low result, which is a substantial drop. Medium achieves 70 FPS, a 17.3% reduction from Low, while High produces 51.6 FPS, a 26.3% decrease from Medium. Ultra falls to 37.9 FPS, a 26.6% reduction from High. The 4K results demonstrate that while the RTX 4070 can handle the game at lower presets, the Ultra preset at 4K is the only configuration that falls below 40 FPS, making it unsuitable for smooth gameplay.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p and then to 4K reveals important insights about the system’s balance. Moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 at the High preset, the average FPS drops from 160.7 to 104.8, representing a 34.8% decrease. This is close to the theoretical pixel count increase of 78%, but the actual FPS drop is less severe, suggesting that the GPU has enough headroom at 1080p that the transition to 1440p does not fully saturate its capabilities. At the Low preset, the drop from 247 to 160.9 FPS is a 34.9% reduction, showing a consistent scaling factor.

The transition from 1440p to 4K at High shows a more significant impact, with FPS falling from 104.8 to 51.6, a 50.8% decrease. This larger proportional drop indicates that the GPU is becoming the dominant bottleneck at 4K, as the pixel count doubles from 1440p to 4K (approximately 2.25x the pixels). The fact that the FPS does not halve completely suggests that some efficiency is retained, but the trend is clear: the RTX 4070 is stretched thin at 4K with High settings. At Ultra, the drop from 78.8 at 1440p to 37.9 at 4K is a 51.9% reduction, further confirming the GPU-bound nature at higher resolutions.

The data shows that the Ryzen 7 5800X is not a limiting factor at any tested resolution. The consistent FPS scaling with resolution changes, rather than with settings changes alone, indicates that the GPU is the primary component dictating performance. At 1080p Low, the 247 FPS average is likely near the CPU’s rendering ceiling, but this is an extreme case. For typical gameplay at 1440p High or 4K Medium, the GPU workload dominates, and the CPU’s 8-core, 16-thread configuration provides ample headroom for the game’s turn-based logic. This pairing is well-balanced for Hard West, with the GPU acting as the performance gatekeeper at higher resolutions and the CPU ensuring no frame drops during complex AI turns.