Hard West

The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 in Hard West demonstrates a classic case of a modern high-end GPU being constrained by a game's older engine and the CPU's capabilities at lower resolutions. The measured data shows a clear progression of frame rates that shift from being heavily CPU-bound to becoming more GPU-dependent as resolution increases, though the absolute performance remains exceptionally high throughout.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals how the bottleneck shifts between components. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces 242.8 FPS, but this drops to 210.1 FPS at 1440p and then to 122.2 FPS at 4K. This scaling pattern indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is the primary limiter, as the GPU has ample headroom to render frames far faster than the processor can feed it. The 32.1 FPS difference between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings is relatively modest, suggesting the GPU is still not fully saturated at 1440p.

The scaling becomes more pronounced when moving to 4K. At High settings, the transition from 1440p (146.7 FPS) to 4K (76.2 FPS) represents a 48% reduction in frame rate, which is a substantial drop that points to the GPU now becoming the dominant constraint. This trend continues with Ultra settings, where 4K yields 57 FPS compared to 105.9 FPS at 1440p — a 46% decrease. The data suggests that the RTX 4090's immense compute resources are only fully utilized at 4K, particularly with higher quality presets.

Interestingly, the scaling between Low and Medium settings at 1440p is minimal (210.1 FPS to 190.8 FPS), while the jump to High (146.7 FPS) is much larger. This indicates that the High preset introduces rendering features that significantly increase GPU load, whereas the difference between Low and Medium is less demanding. At 4K, the scaling is more linear across presets, with each step up in quality costing roughly 20-25 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 7 5800X and RTX 4090 ranks 69th out of 1,699 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the top 4% of all configurations. This ranking is notable because the CPU itself sits at the 84th percentile among all processors, while the GPU is at the 91st percentile. The combo ranking being higher than either component's individual percentile suggests that Hard West's engine benefits from the balanced pairing of a strong multi-threaded CPU with a top-tier GPU.

The Ryzen 7 5800X's nearest rivals in CPU benchmarks show how close the competition is at this performance tier. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800 scores an average of 27,535, which is just 0.3% lower than the 5800X's 27,606 average. Meanwhile, the AMD Ryzen 5 8500GE and Intel Core i7-13700H both score 27,708 and 27,716 respectively, each trailing the 5800X by 0.4%. The Intel Core i5-12600KF is 0.8% behind with a score of 27,827. These tiny deltas indicate that the 5800X is firmly in the middle of a very tight pack of processors, meaning the combo's strong rank in Hard West is likely more attributable to the GPU than the CPU.

For the GPU, the RTX 4090's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the NVIDIA Tesla T4, which scores 66,733 on average, just 0.4% below the 4090's 66,473. The NVIDIA Tesla P40 is 0.5% ahead at 66,127, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 and NVIDIA Quadro P6000 are 0.9% and 1.3% behind respectively. These workstation-oriented cards being so close in synthetic scores highlights how the RTX 4090's gaming-focused design excels in real-world scenarios like Hard West, where its combination of raw compute and memory bandwidth pays dividends.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090 brings substantial hardware resources to bear, with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is particularly relevant for Hard West, as the game's turn-based tactical nature often involves large, detailed environments that can benefit from high-bandwidth memory access. The GPU's clocks are set at 2235 MHz base and 2520 MHz boost, which are high frequencies for a 5 nm process node, enabling the 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance.

The GPU's memory clock operates at 1313 MHz, which translates to 21 Gbps effective, and this high memory speed helps sustain frame rates even at 4K Ultra where the card produces 57 FPS. The 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores are present but likely underutilized in Hard West, which is a game from 2015 and thus predates widespread ray tracing adoption. The 16,384 shading units and 512 TMUs provide the raw pixel-pushing capability that drives the high frame rates seen at lower resolutions.

The RTX 4090's 176 ROPs and pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s become more relevant as resolution increases. At 4K, the card needs to fill over 8.3 million pixels per frame, and the data shows that even with this workload, it maintains playable frame rates across all presets. The GPU's 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms its top-tier status, though its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are all professional-grade cards, suggesting that the 4090's gaming-specific optimizations make it even more effective in actual titles.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured frame rates, the Ultra preset at 1440p delivers the best balance of visual quality and performance, producing 105.9 FPS. This is well above the 60 FPS threshold and provides a significant visual improvement over High settings, which achieve 146.7 FPS at the same resolution. The gap between High and Ultra at 1440p is 40.8 FPS, which is a substantial cost for the extra visual fidelity, but the resulting frame rate remains smooth.

For 4K displays, the High preset at 76.2 FPS is the recommended choice, as it maintains fluid gameplay while offering better visual quality than Medium (98.3 FPS) or Low (122.2 FPS). The Ultra preset at 4K drops to 57 FPS, which is still playable but may not be ideal for a turn-based tactics game where smooth camera movement and UI responsiveness matter. The 19.2 FPS difference between High and Ultra at 4K represents a meaningful performance hit for what is likely a marginal visual improvement.

At 1080p, even the most demanding Ultra preset produces 171.1 FPS, making any settings choice viable. The data shows that the High preset at 209.7 FPS provides an excellent experience with headroom for future demands, though users with high-refresh-rate monitors may prefer the 242.8 FPS of Low settings. The Medium preset at 228.9 FPS offers a middle ground that balances visual fidelity with extreme performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 242.8 FPS on Low, 228.9 FPS on Medium, 209.7 FPS on High, and 171.1 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a consistent degradation as quality increases, with the largest single drop occurring between High and Ultra at 38.6 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 71.7 FPS, demonstrating that even at the highest quality preset, the system maintains frame rates far above what most displays can show.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates are 210.1 FPS on Low, 190.8 FPS on Medium, 146.7 FPS on High, and 105.9 FPS on Ultra. The drop from Medium to High is particularly steep at 44.1 FPS, suggesting that the High preset enables effects that significantly increase GPU load. The difference between Low and Medium is only 19.3 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is 40.8 FPS, showing that the Ultra preset adds substantial rendering complexity.

At 3840x2160, the performance profile changes character. Low settings produce 122.2 FPS, Medium yields 98.3 FPS, High delivers 76.2 FPS, and Ultra drops to 57 FPS. The scaling here is more uniform, with each preset step costing between 19.2 and 23.9 FPS. This linear degradation indicates that at 4K, the GPU is fully saturated and each additional visual feature directly impacts rendering time. The 65.2 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is the largest absolute spread across all resolutions, confirming that the GPU becomes the definitive bottleneck at this resolution.