Hard West

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for Hard West with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Intel Arc B390 reveal a clear hierarchy across the four available presets, with the data pointing to Medium as the most balanced experience at both 1080p and 1440p. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 71 FPS average with a minimum of 61 FPS and maximum of 82 FPS, which represents a substantial jump from the 55 FPS average seen at High settings while only sacrificing the top-end visual fidelity that this turn-based tactics title offers. The Low preset reaches 87 FPS at 1080p, but the gain over Medium is only 16 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns when dropping from Medium to Low compared to the 16 FPS gain from High to Medium.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out, producing 45 FPS average with a minimum of 38 FPS and maximum of 52 FPS. This resolution places the combo in a playable range for a turn-based game, where the slower pacing tolerates lower frame rates better than fast-action genres. The 1440p High preset drops to 35 FPS, and while still technically playable, the Medium preset offers a 10 FPS improvement that translates to smoother camera panning and unit movement animations. The 4K Ultra preset is the only setting that becomes essentially unplayable at 14 FPS, while 4K Medium at 24 FPS remains marginal at best.

For users with 1080p displays, the data suggests Medium as the optimal choice, as it provides 71 FPS with a comfortable 61 FPS minimum, ensuring no noticeable stutter during hectic combat sequences. The 1440p Medium preset at 45 FPS is similarly the best experience for that resolution, balancing visual quality with responsive gameplay. The Ultra preset at any resolution offers little benefit for the frame rate cost—41 FPS at 1080p, 26 FPS at 1440p, and 14 FPS at 4K—making it a poor trade-off even for a slower-paced genre. Low settings are viable for competitive play or high-refresh displays, but the data shows Medium captures most of the performance headroom without the visual degradation of Low.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution to play Hard West with this hardware combo?

A: The data shows 1920x1080 at Medium settings provides the best overall experience, delivering 71 FPS average with a 61 FPS minimum. This resolution offers the highest frame rates while maintaining visual fidelity, and the 1080p Low preset reaches 87 FPS for those prioritizing maximum smoothness.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B390 perform relative to its closest GPU rivals?

A: The Intel Arc B390 holds a 1.3% advantage over the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX, a 1.5% lead over the NVIDIA GeForce 800M, a 2.5% edge over the NVIDIA GeForce GT 625 OEM, and a 2.7% advantage over the NVIDIA GeForce GT 710, based on average benchmark scores. The GPU sits in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, indicating it is a low-tier performer.

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X a bottleneck for the Intel Arc B390 in Hard West?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the limiting component, as the CPU ranks in the 87th percentile of all CPUs while the GPU ranks in the 9th percentile. The CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads provide far more processing capability than this turn-based tactics title requires, leaving the GPU as the primary constraint on frame rates.

Q: What frame rates can I expect at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the Ultra preset averages 14 FPS, High averages 18 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a 20 FPS minimum, and Low averages 29 FPS. None of these settings provide a consistently smooth experience, though the Low preset comes closest to playability for a turn-based game.

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

A: The combo ranks 2614 out of 2949 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 12% of all tested hardware pairings. This ranking reflects the GPU's low performance tier, as the CPU's strong benchmark scores cannot compensate for the graphics card's limitations.

Q: Does increasing settings from Low to Medium provide a proportional performance drop?

A: No, the data shows a non-linear relationship. At 1080p, Low delivers 87 FPS while Medium delivers 71 FPS, a drop of 16 FPS or roughly 18%. However, moving from Medium to High only drops 16 FPS to 55 FPS, while High to Ultra drops another 14 FPS to 41 FPS, showing that each setting tier costs a similar absolute frame rate but the percentage impact grows at lower frame rates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance cliff as resolution increases, indicating the Intel Arc B390 is the definitive limiting factor in this combo. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 87 FPS at 1080p to 55 FPS at 1440p—a 32 FPS reduction or roughly 37%—and then further to 29 FPS at 4K, representing a 26 FPS drop from 1440p, or about 47%. This pattern of increasingly severe percentage losses at higher resolutions is classic GPU-bound behavior, where the pixel throughput demands outpace what the Arc B390's 7.680 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 60.00 GPixel/s pixel rate can deliver.

The Medium preset shows a similar trajectory: 71 FPS at 1080p, 45 FPS at 1440p, and 24 FPS at 4K. The step from 1080p to 1440p costs 26 FPS (about 37%), while 1440p to 4K costs 21 FPS (about 47%). This consistent percentage degradation across settings suggests the GPU's memory bandwidth—listed as "System Dependent" and shared with the system—is a significant constraint, as higher resolutions require more texture fetching and memory traffic. The fact that the GPU uses System Shared memory rather than dedicated VRAM likely amplifies this effect, since the memory bus and bandwidth are not optimized for graphics workloads.

The High preset follows the same pattern, with 55 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 36% and 49% respectively, reinforcing the GPU-bound nature of the scaling. Notably, the 4K Ultra preset at 14 FPS is a 66% drop from the 1440p Ultra at 26 FPS, showing that the most demanding settings compound the resolution penalty. The data implies that the Arc B390's 80 W TDP and IGP form factor—integrated into the processor package—cannot sustain the memory bandwidth or shader throughput needed for high-resolution rendering, making 1080p the only resolution where this combo achieves consistently playable frame rates across all settings.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 2614 out of 2949 tested combinations in Hard West, this AMD Ryzen 9 5900X plus Intel Arc B390 pairing sits deep in the bottom tier of the database, in roughly the 11th percentile of all tested hardware configurations. This ranking is unsurprising given the stark asymmetry between the two components: the CPU ranks in the 87th percentile of all processors, while the GPU ranks in the 9th percentile of all graphics cards. The combination of a top-tier CPU with a bottom-tier GPU creates a system that is fundamentally imbalanced for gaming, and the ranking reflects this—nearly 89% of tested combos deliver better performance in this title.

The rank of 2614 means that 335 other combinations performed worse than this setup, which provides some context for how low the bar is set by the Arc B390. The GPU's nearest rivals—the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX, GeForce 800M, GeForce GT 625 OEM, and GeForce GT 710—are all legacy or entry-level parts from previous generations, underscoring the Arc B390's position as a budget integrated solution rather than a discrete gaming GPU. In a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, which is not graphically demanding by modern standards, this combo still only manages 41 FPS at 1080p Ultra, highlighting the GPU's limitations.

The ranking also implies that most users with discrete GPUs from the past decade would achieve better results, as the 2949 total combos likely represent a wide range of hardware generations. The CPU's high percentile ranking (87th) does not translate into a high combo rank because the GPU constrains every frame, making the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads largely irrelevant for this game's performance ceiling. The data suggests that pairing a high-end CPU with an integrated GPU is a poor strategy for gaming, as the combo rank demonstrates how the weakest link determines the overall outcome.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X brings substantial processing power to this combo, with 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, running at a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 per core, and a 64 MB L3 cache, totaling a substantial pool of fast memory for game logic. In Hard West, a turn-based tactics game from 2015, the computational demands are modest—the genre relies more on AI decision-making and pathfinding than real-time physics or complex simulations, but those tasks still benefit from strong single-thread performance.

The 5900X delivers a 3dmark_single_thread score of 941 and a 3dmark_2_threads score of 1852, indicating capable single-core throughput. The multi-threaded scores scale strongly, with 3dmark_8_threads at 6601 and 3dmark_max_threads at 10075, but Hard West's engine likely does not utilize all 24 threads efficiently given its 2015 release date. The CPU's passmark_single_thread score of 3469 and passmark_multithread score of 39002 show that while the processor can handle heavy parallel workloads, the game's performance will be dictated by the GPU rather than CPU throughput.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 87th places it among the top 13% of all processors, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (0.3% higher average score), Intel Core Ultra 7 356H (0.4% higher), AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 440 (0.4% higher), and Intel Core i7-14650HX (0.5% lower). These close margins—all within 0.5% of the 5900X's average benchmark score of 41376—indicate that the CPU is competitive with modern mid-range and high-end mobile processors. However, in Hard West, the CPU's 3dmark_16_threads score of 9075 and cinebench_r23_multicore score of 16262 are far beyond what the game requires, meaning the CPU is never the bottleneck in this combo.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a full range of performance across the four settings. Low settings deliver the highest average at 87 FPS, followed by Medium at 71 FPS with a minimum of 61 FPS and maximum of 82 FPS, then High at 55 FPS, and finally Ultra at 41 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 46 FPS, representing a 53% performance drop when maxing out all visual options. The Medium preset's 61 FPS minimum ensures that even the most demanding scenes—such as multiple units with effects on screen—stay above the 60 FPS threshold, while the Ultra preset's 41 FPS average suggests occasional dips below 40 FPS during intense sequences.

At 2560x1440, the performance scales down predictably. Low settings average 55 FPS, Medium averages 45 FPS with a minimum of 38 FPS and maximum of 52 FPS, High averages 35 FPS, and Ultra averages 26 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p remains the most viable option, as the 38 FPS minimum is still acceptable for turn-based gameplay where quick reflexes are not required. The 1440p Ultra at 26 FPS is borderline, and the gap between Low and Ultra is 29 FPS, a 53% reduction that mirrors the 1080p pattern.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes marginal across all settings. Low averages 29 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 20 FPS and maximum of 27 FPS, High averages 18 FPS, and Ultra averages 14 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K provides a 20 FPS minimum, which may be tolerable for a turn-based game but leaves little headroom for complex scenes. The 4K data reveals that the Arc B390 cannot handle this resolution at any settings, as even Low fails to reach 30 FPS average. The only settings with min/max data are the Medium presets across all resolutions—1080p (61-82 FPS), 1440p (38-52 FPS), and 4K (20-27 FPS)—indicating that Medium was the only preset where frame time variance was measured, likely due to its balanced load on the GPU.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is the decisive factor in this combo's gaming performance, and the data paints a clear picture of a low-end integrated GPU struggling with a modern game. The GPU's 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12 score of 1482 places it in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, with nearest rivals being the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1.3% higher), GeForce 800M (1.5% higher), and GeForce GT 625 OEM (2.5% higher). This performance tier is comparable to entry-level discrete GPUs from over a decade ago, which explains why the measured FPS in Hard West are so modest despite the game's 2015 release.

The GPU's architecture is Xe3-LPG on Intel's 3 nm process, with 1536 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 24 ROPs. The boost clock of 2500 MHz yields a pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s, but the FP32 compute of 7.680 TFLOPS is the key constraint for modern rendering techniques. More critically, the memory configuration is "System Shared" with "System Dependent" bandwidth, meaning the GPU relies on the CPU's DDR4 memory—the Ryzen 9 5900X supports dual-channel DDR4 with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s—but shared memory access introduces latency and contention that dedicated VRAM avoids.

The GPU's 12 RT cores and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 indicate modern feature support, but the raw performance is insufficient for high-resolution gaming. The 80 W TDP and IGP slot width confirm this is an integrated solution, not a discrete card, and the "Portable Device Dependent" display outputs suggest it is designed for laptops or compact systems. The measured FPS data aligns with the 9th percentile ranking: at 1080p Medium, the 71 FPS average is respectable for a turn-based game, but the GPU's limitations become apparent at 1440p (45 FPS) and 4K (24 FPS), where the shared memory bandwidth and modest compute capacity cannot keep pace with pixel throughput demands. The GPU is unambiguously the bottleneck in this combo, and any upgrade path would prioritize replacing or supplementing this integrated graphics solution.