Hard West

# Hard West with AMD Ryzen 7 7700 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D produces an intriguing set of results in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at lower resolutions, with the CPU becoming increasingly relevant as pixel count rises. This combination ranks 41st out of 3,722 tested combos in this game, placing it in the top 1.1% of all configurations — a strong showing that reflects the raw horsepower of both components. The data paints a picture of a setup that can handle this older title with massive headroom at 1080p, yet still shows meaningful performance scaling challenges as settings and resolution increase.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep drop-off that tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives. At 1080p High settings, the system delivers 243 FPS, but moving to 1440p High drops that to 158 FPS — a 35% reduction. Pushing further to 2160p High yields 83 FPS, which is 66% lower than the 1080p result. This dramatic scaling pattern indicates that at 1080p, the RTX 5090 D is not being fully utilized; the Ryzen 7 7700's 8 cores and 16 threads are likely the limiting factor at that resolution. The game engine, designed for a 2015 release, simply cannot feed enough draw calls to keep the GPU saturated at lower pixel counts.

The same pattern holds across all settings presets. Low settings show 287 FPS at 1080p, falling to 247 FPS at 1440p (a 14% drop) and then to 131 FPS at 4K (a 54% drop from 1080p). Medium settings follow suit: 268 FPS at 1080p, 205 FPS at 1440p, and 108 FPS at 4K. Ultra settings produce 187 FPS at 1080p, 118 FPS at 1440p, and 62 FPS at 4K. The consistent pattern across all presets suggests that resolution scaling is primarily a GPU workload phenomenon — the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 512-bit bus width handle the increased pixel throughput, but the frame rate ceiling at lower resolutions is set by CPU-bound game logic.

At 4K, the scaling between Low and Ultra settings shows a 52.7% performance gap (131 FPS vs 62 FPS), which is substantial but not as dramatic as the resolution scaling itself. This suggests that at 4K, the GPU is becoming the primary constraint, and the settings-driven frame rate differences reflect actual GPU workload changes rather than CPU limitations. The min FPS data points available for Medium settings reinforce this: at 4K Medium, the minimum is 92 FPS, at 1440p Medium it is 174 FPS, and at 1080p Medium it is 228 FPS — the minimum frame rates scale proportionally with averages, indicating stable performance without major hitches.

FAQ

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations in Hard West?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D combination ranks 41st out of 3,722 tested combos, placing it in the top 1.1% of all configurations tested for this game.

Q: What is the maximum average FPS achievable with this setup?

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 287 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At High settings, the maximum average is 243 FPS at 1080p.

Q: Is the RTX 5090 D's 32 GB VRAM beneficial for Hard West?

A: The game's measured performance does not indicate VRAM constraints — no settings preset or resolution shows anomalous frame rate collapses. The 32 GB GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth provide far more capacity and throughput than this 2015 title requires.

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High settings produce 158 FPS average, while Ultra settings produce 118 FPS average — a 25.3% reduction in frame rate for the Ultra preset.

Q: Does the Ryzen 7 7700 bottleneck the RTX 5090 D in this game?

A: Benchmark data suggests yes, particularly at 1080p. The frame rate ceiling of 287 FPS at Low settings indicates CPU limitation, as the RTX 5090 D is capable of far higher output in other scenarios. The 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor with 5.30 GHz boost clock becomes the limiting component at lower resolutions.

Q: What is the CPU's benchmark percentile compared to other processors?

A: The Ryzen 7 7700 scores in the 87th percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 40,081. It sits within 0.6% of its nearest rivals in aggregate benchmarking.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data supports a clear recommendation for High settings as the sweet spot for this combination. At 1440p High, the system delivers 158 FPS average — well above the refresh rate of most high-end displays, while maintaining visual quality that represents the game's intended presentation. Ultra settings at 1440p drop to 118 FPS, a 25.3% penalty for what is likely a marginal visual improvement in a turn-based tactics game where action is not fast-paced.

At 4K, High settings at 83 FPS provide the best balance for players with 4K displays. The jump to Ultra at 4K costs 25.3% performance (62 FPS vs 83 FPS), which may be acceptable given the genre's slower pacing, but the data suggests High is preferable for maintaining smooth camera movement and UI responsiveness. Medium settings at 4K (108 FPS) offer an alternative for those prioritizing frame rate over visual fidelity, with a 30.1% improvement over High while still maintaining acceptable visual quality.

For competitive or high-refresh-rate play at 1080p, Medium settings (268 FPS) provide near-maximum frame rates with better visuals than Low (287 FPS). The difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is only 6.6%, making Medium the obvious choice for 1080p users. At 1440p, Low (247 FPS) versus Medium (205 FPS) shows a 17% gap, but High (158 FPS) still offers excellent frame rates for most displays. The Ultra preset is only recommended for players who prioritize maximum visual fidelity and have displays with lower refresh rates, as the frame rate penalty is substantial at every resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 41 out of 3,722 tested combinations places this system in the 98.9th percentile for Hard West performance. This is a remarkable result for a game released in 2015, as the combination of a 2023 CPU and 2025 GPU represents modern hardware running an older title. The rank reflects that only 40 other combinations out of 3,722 produced higher average frame rates across the measured scenarios.

The GPU's percentile ranking (92nd among all GPUs) and the CPU's percentile ranking (87th among all CPUs) combine to produce this top-tier result. However, the nearest rival data for the GPU is instructive: the RTX 5090 D's average benchmark score of 77,712 is only 1.1% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 6650M XT's 76,904, and 1.6% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT's 78,940. This suggests that in aggregate benchmarking, the RTX 5090 D does not dominate as much as its specifications might imply — yet in Hard West specifically, the 41st rank indicates strong discipline-specific performance.

The CPU's nearest rivals show a similar pattern: the Ryzen 7 7700's average score of 40,081 is within 0.6% of the Intel Core i9-13905H (40,313) and 0.4% of the AMD Ryzen 9 270 (40,246). This tight clustering indicates that the CPU's performance in Hard West is not uniquely superior to its peers, but the combination with the RTX 5090 D produces excellent results due to the GPU's capabilities in this game's rendering pipeline.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 D's specifications paint a picture of extreme overkill for Hard West, yet the measured performance reveals that the GPU still plays a critical role at higher resolutions. The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth provides 1750 MHz memory clock (28 Gbps effective) — bandwidth that is entirely unnecessary for a turn-based tactics game, but which ensures zero memory-related bottlenecks even at 4K Ultra settings.

The GPU's 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 render output units deliver a pixel rate of 423.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,636.8 GTexel/s. These figures explain why the GPU can handle 4K workloads at 62 FPS minimum (Ultra settings) despite the game's age. The 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores are present but likely unused by this title, which predates widespread ray tracing adoption. The Blackwell 2.0 architecture on a 5 nm process from TSMC, with 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, represents a massive computational resource.

The GPU's benchmark results are notably mixed: PassMark DirectX 9 scores 434, DirectX 10 scores 231, DirectX 11 scores 371, and DirectX 12 scores 219. These scores reflect the GPU's performance across different API generations, with the older DirectX 9 path (which Hard West likely uses for maximum compatibility) scoring highest. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 310,674 and Vulkan score of 376,915 indicate strong compute performance, but the game's actual workload appears to favor the traditional rasterization pipeline.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates are: Low 287 FPS, Medium 268 FPS (min 228, max 308), High 243 FPS, and Ultra 187 FPS. The 34.8% difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p shows that the CPU and GPU combination has substantial headroom even at maximum settings. The Medium preset's minimum of 228 FPS ensures smooth gameplay even during complex scenes.

At 2560x1440, the results are: Low 247 FPS, Medium 205 FPS (min 174, max 236), High 158 FPS, and Ultra 118 FPS. The transition from 1080p to 1440p causes a 14-35% performance drop depending on settings, with Ultra settings suffering the most (37% drop from 187 to 118 FPS). This indicates that 1440p Ultra begins to stress the GPU more meaningfully.

At 3840x2160, the measured values are: Low 131 FPS, Medium 108 FPS (min 92, max 126), High 83 FPS, and Ultra 62 FPS. The 4K resolution causes a 47-67% performance drop from 1080p depending on settings. The Ultra preset at 4K (62 FPS) is the only measured configuration that approaches the lower bounds of smooth gameplay, though for a turn-based game, this remains playable. The Medium preset at 4K provides 108 FPS average with 92 FPS minimum, which is still excellent.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700's 8 cores and 16 threads based on the 7000 series architecture provide single-thread performance that is crucial for Hard West's game logic. The 3.80 GHz base clock and 5.30 GHz boost clock deliver strong single-core performance, as evidenced by the 3DMark single-thread score of 1,049 and PassMark single-thread score of 4,063. These scores are critical because turn-based tactics games often have significant CPU-bound logic for AI pathfinding, line-of-sight calculations, and unit animations.

The CPU's multi-threaded capabilities, while not the primary constraint in this game, provide headroom for background processes and any physics calculations the game might perform. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 18,760 and Geekbench multi-core score of 15,371 indicate strong overall throughput. The PassMark physics score of 1,978 and floating-point math score of 66,246 suggest the CPU can handle any computational demands the game engine presents without becoming a bottleneck.

At 1080p, the CPU is clearly the limiting factor: the difference between Low (287 FPS) and Ultra (187 FPS) at 1080p is 53.5%, but this is likely due to increased draw calls and CPU-side processing for higher settings rather than GPU limitations. The 65W TDP and AMD Socket AM5 platform provide efficient operation, with the CPU's percentile ranking of 87 among all CPUs confirming its strong overall performance. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 8,484 versus 2-thread score of 2,043 shows excellent scaling, though the game likely uses fewer threads for its core logic.