Hard West

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for Hard West show a clear hierarchy across the four available presets, and the data favors Medium as the balanced choice for this specific combination of AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Intel Arc B370. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers an average of 64 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 74 FPS, which is the only preset at that resolution that clears a 60 FPS average while maintaining a floor above 50 FPS. Low is faster at 79 FPS average, but the jump to Medium costs only 15 FPS while presumably retaining substantially more visual fidelity, a trade-off that benchmark results consistently support for turn-based tactics where frame timing matters less than image clarity.

At 2560x1440, Medium again emerges as the pragmatic pick, posting 41 FPS average with a 35 FPS minimum and 47 FPS maximum. The Low preset at 50 FPS average is smoother, but the gap between Low and Medium narrows to just 9 FPS at this resolution, suggesting the GPU overhead for Medium features is modest. High at 1440p drops to 31 FPS, which is playable for a turn-based game but begins to feel sluggish during camera pans and combat animations. Ultra at 1440p falls to 23 FPS, which the data suggests is below the threshold for comfortable play even in a genre that does not demand twitch reflexes.

For 3840x2160, no preset achieves a playable average. Medium hits 21 FPS with a 18 FPS minimum and 25 FPS maximum, Low reaches 26 FPS, High manages 16 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 12 FPS. The recommendation for 4K is unequivocal: the Intel Arc B370, with its System Shared memory and 25 W TDP, lacks the throughput to handle Hard West at this resolution regardless of settings. The best experience per the measured rows is therefore Medium at 1080p, which offers the highest average FPS that still exceeds 60, with the 1440p Medium preset as a secondary option for users who prioritize resolution over frame rate.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B370 is an integrated graphics solution built on the Panther Lake chip with Xe3-LPG architecture and a 3 nm process node from Intel. Its clock speeds are listed as a 300 MHz base and a 2400 MHz boost, which is a wide frequency range typical of mobile or embedded parts that scale power aggressively. The GPU has 1280 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 20 raster operation units, with 10 ray tracing cores. More critically for a game like Hard West, the memory configuration is entirely System Shared, meaning there is no dedicated VRAM; the bus width is System Shared and bandwidth is System Dependent. This is the single most important factor in interpreting the measured FPS, because the GPU must compete with the CPU for memory bandwidth across the system bus.

The FP32 throughput is 6.144 TFLOPS, with FP16 at 12.29 TFLOPS (2:1), and pixel rate is 48.00 GPixel/s with texture rate of 96.00 GTexel/s. These are modest figures that place the Arc B370 in the lower tier of the GPU benchmark percentile at 5, with an average benchmark score of 1184 on 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. The nearest rivals in the GPU data are all legacy parts: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 at 1186 (deltaPct -0.2), ATI Radeon HD 5770 at 1190 (deltaPct -0.5), AMD Radeon HD 7650M at 1192 (deltaPct -0.7), and AMD FirePro M2000 at 1168 (deltaPct 1.4). The Arc B370 sits between these older cards, which explains why it struggles at higher resolutions in Hard West. The game is not graphically demanding by modern standards, but even a lightweight title requires sufficient fill rate and memory bandwidth, and the System Shared memory becomes a bottleneck as resolution increases.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Intel Arc B370 ranks 2721 out of 2949 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the bottom 8% of all pairings in the database. This rank is driven almost entirely by the GPU's limitations; the CPU is a high-end desktop part with an 80th percentile ranking against all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 5th percentile against all GPUs. The data shows a massive imbalance: the processor is capable of far more than the integrated graphics can deliver, and the combo rank reflects the weakest link in the chain.

In practical terms, this rank means that most other tested combinations, even those with older or less powerful CPUs, will outperform this pairing in Hard West because they pair CPUs with discrete graphics solutions. The combo rank of 2721 out of 2949 indicates that only about 228 combinations perform worse, and those are likely to feature similarly weak integrated graphics or severely outdated discrete GPUs. The data suggests that this combo is not recommended for Hard West at any resolution above 1080p, and even at 1080p, it only achieves acceptable frame rates at Medium or lower settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings presets, providing a complete grid of 12 datapoints. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows: Low produces an average of 79 FPS, Medium averages 64 FPS with a range of 55 to 74, High averages 49 FPS, and Ultra averages 37 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steady decline, with each step up in settings costing roughly 15 FPS on average. The minimum FPS is only recorded for Medium (55 FPS), but the absence of min/max data for other presets should not be read as stability; rather, it reflects incomplete data collection.

At 2560x1440, the averages drop significantly: Low averages 50 FPS, Medium averages 41 FPS with a range of 35 to 47, High averages 31 FPS, and Ultra averages 23 FPS. The percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p is substantial: Low falls from 79 to 50 FPS (a 37% reduction), Medium from 64 to 41 FPS (a 36% reduction), High from 49 to 31 FPS (a 37% reduction), and Ultra from 37 to 23 FPS (a 38% reduction). The consistency of these drops across settings suggests a uniform resolution scaling penalty, which points to a fill-rate or memory-bandwidth constraint rather than a compute-bound scenario.

At 3840x2160, the averages become untenable: Low averages 26 FPS, Medium averages 21 FPS with a range of 18 to 25, High averages 16 FPS, and Ultra averages 12 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K is even steeper: Low falls from 50 to 26 FPS (a 48% reduction), Medium from 41 to 21 FPS (a 49% reduction), High from 31 to 16 FPS (a 48% reduction), and Ultra from 23 to 12 FPS (a 48% reduction). This near-uniform 48% penalty across all settings is a strong indicator that the GPU is hitting a hard memory bandwidth ceiling at 4K, consistent with the System Shared memory configuration.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this hardware in Hard West?

A: The data shows 1920x1080 with Medium settings provides the best experience, averaging 64 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS. This is the only configuration that exceeds 60 FPS average while maintaining a frame floor above 50 FPS.

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

A: No. At 3840x2160, the highest average FPS is 26 on Low settings, with Medium at 21, High at 16, and Ultra at 12. None of these are playable, and the data indicates a hard memory bandwidth limit at this resolution.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B370 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The Arc B370 has an average benchmark score of 1184 on 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Its nearest rivals are the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186, deltaPct -0.2), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190, deltaPct -0.5), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192, deltaPct -0.7), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168, deltaPct 1.4). It sits in the middle of this group.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this combo?

A: The GPU is the limiting factor. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D ranks at the 80th percentile against all CPUs, while the Arc B370 ranks at the 5th percentile against all GPUs. The FPS drops across resolutions follow a pattern consistent with GPU memory bandwidth limits, not CPU compute limits.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank in the database for Hard West?

A: The combo ranks 2721 out of 2949 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 8% of all pairings. This rank is driven by the GPU's low performance relative to other tested graphics solutions.

Q: Does the Medium preset provide a significant advantage over High?

A: Yes. At 1080p, Medium averages 64 FPS versus 49 FPS for High, a 31% improvement. At 1440p, Medium averages 41 FPS versus 31 FPS for High, a 32% improvement. The gap narrows at 4K where both are unplayable (21 vs 16 FPS).

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a desktop processor from the 5000 series, built on Zen 3 architecture (codename Vermeer) using a 7 nm process from TSMC. It has 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost clock of 4.50 GHz. The cache hierarchy is notable: 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and a large 96 MB shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration, with a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, and uses the AMD Socket AM4 interface with PCIe Gen 4 (20 lanes from the CPU). Its TDP is 105 W, and it was released in April 2022 with a launch MSRP of $449.

In Hard West, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, but it is not irrelevant. The game is a turn-based tactics title, which means it involves substantial CPU work for AI pathfinding, turn resolution, and game state management, but these tasks are generally single-threaded or lightly threaded. The 5800X3D's single-thread performance is measured at 884 on 3DMark single-thread, 241 on Cinebench R15 single-core, and 1452 on Cinebench R23 single-core. These are strong scores, though the data does not show any direct correlation between CPU benchmarks and the measured FPS in Hard West because the GPU bottleneck dominates.

The multi-threaded capabilities are extensive: 3DMark 16-thread score is 7299, Cinebench R23 multi-core is 14317, Geekbench multi-core is 11765, and PassMark multi-thread is 28309. However, the benchmark data does not indicate that Hard West leverages this parallelism. The FPS numbers are consistent across resolutions in a way that suggests the CPU is never the limiting factor; if the CPU were limiting, we would expect to see similar FPS at 1080p and 1440p, but instead we see a consistent drop with each resolution increase. This confirms that the CPU is providing ample headroom, and the 8-core/16-thread configuration with 96 MB of L3 cache is vastly overqualified for this pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K reveals a consistent scaling pattern that identifies the limiting component. From 1080p to 1440p, all four settings presets lose approximately 36-38% of their average FPS. From 1440p to 4K, the loss is approximately 48% across all presets. This nearly uniform percentage drop, regardless of the settings preset, is a textbook signature of a GPU memory bandwidth limit. The Intel Arc B370's System Shared memory means that as resolution increases, the amount of memory bandwidth required to fill each frame scales with the pixel count, and the shared bus becomes saturated.

The data shows that Low settings at 1080p (79 FPS) and Low at 1440p (50 FPS) both drop to 26 FPS at 4K. The absolute numbers are low, but the relative scaling is what matters: the GPU is unable to maintain even a modest frame rate at 4K because the fill rate of 48.00 GPixel/s and the System Dependent bandwidth simply cannot service 8.3 million pixels per frame. In contrast, the CPU's performance, as measured by its benchmarks, shows no such scaling issue; the 5800X3D's scores are independent of resolution.

The implication is clear: for this combo, resolution scaling is purely a GPU constraint. Users who want to play Hard West with this hardware should target 1080p, where the GPU can deliver acceptable frame rates at Medium or Low settings. Attempting to increase resolution to 1440p or 4K yields diminishing returns and eventually becomes unplayable, as the 4K data shows with all presets below 26 FPS. The CPU has no involvement in this scaling penalty, and even a significantly weaker CPU would produce nearly identical FPS numbers at 4K, since the GPU is the sole bottleneck at that resolution.