Hard West

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, two parts from separate eras of hardware, combine in Hard West (a turn-based tactics title released in 2015) to produce a set of measurements that are more about scaling than about absolute frame rates. The tables below treat frame-time behavior from 1080p to 4K across four quality presets, while also checking how the CPU and GPU individually stack up against other parts in the database. The data is measured directly, so the numbers reflect real-world behavior on this specific pairing.

Resolution Scaling

Hard West ’s performance scales in the expected direction—every quality preset loses frame rate as the render resolution climbs from 1920×1080 through 2560×1440 to 3840×2160. The percentage drops are not uniform across settings, which speaks to how the GPU and the CPU share duties depending on the load.

At the High preset, the average frame rate falls from 206 FPS at 1080p to 131 FPS at 1440p—a drop of roughly 36%—and then down to 69 FPS at 4K, another 47% reduction. The step from 1080p to 1440p costs less than a quarter of the raw performance, but the 1440p-to-4K jump slashes the frame rate by half. A similar pattern holds for Medium: 229 FPS at 1080p gives way to 170 FPS at 1440p (−26%) and then to 89 FPS at 4K (−48%). Low more moderately: 246 FPS at 1080p, 207 FPS at 1440p (−16%), and 109 FPS at 4K (−47%). The Ultra preset sees the steepest overall decline, from 155 FPS at 1080p to 98 FPS at 1440p (−37%) and then to 51 FPS at 4K (−48%). So the largest resolution step—1440p to 4K—is consistently about a 48% performance cut across all settings, while the 1080p-to-1440p step is milder, ranging from 16% (Low) to 37% (Ultra).

This scaling pattern tells us that at 1080p, even lower quality presets (Low, Medium) are far above any display refresh rate, with averages of 246 and 229 FPS respectively. That amount of headroom indicates the scene is not yet in a GPU-limits region—the CPU and the game engine’s threading model are likely capping the output. However, when the pixel count jumps to 4K, the GPU load increases enough that the frame rate settles near the 51–109 FPS range, which is right in the zone where a high-end graphics card would be expected to operate. The fact that the Low preset still yields 109 FPS at 4K suggests the game is not heavily demanding on the GPU even at that resolution, and that the CPU can keep up with the RTX 4080’s output. In other words, at 1440p and above, the GPU is the limiting component; at 1080p, the CPU or the game’s logic, whatever it is, keeps the average from rising above the 200+ FPS that would otherwise be possible on this pairing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is a 40-series card built on the Ada Lovelace architecture. It packs 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. Its base clock is 2205 MHz with a boost up to 2505 MHz, and it carries 47.4 TFLOPS of FP32 compute along with 304 texture units and 112 render output units. These are the raw numbers; in terms of aggregate benchmark scores, the card ranks in the 86th percentile of all GPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 54,247. Its nearest rivals in the database are the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER with a delta of only +0.1%, an AMD Radeon Pro W5700X at −1.1%, and then the Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB and AMD Radeon 8060S at −2.6% and −2.7% respectively. So in a broad sense, the RTX 4080 sits at the top of the pyramid, but the performance difference with its closest neighbor is essentially negligible (0.1%).

In Hard West, the GPU’s contribution is most visible at 4K and Ultra settings. The Ultra preset at 4K produces a 51 FPS average, which is the only time the measurement dips below 60 FPS in the entire set. At 1440p Ultra, the average rises to 98 FPS, and at 1080p Ultra to 155 FPS. None of these figures represent a struggle for a card with 16 GB of VRAM and a 716 GB/s memory pipe; the game likely never comes close to filling the 16 GB buffer. Instead, the observed scaling shows that the GPU has enough cache and bandwidth to handle the game’s textures, but the heavy pixel work at 4K still drags the frame rate down to a smooth-but-not-90 level. The fact that a 4K Low run nearly doubles the 4K Ultra number (109 vs. 51 FPS) underlines that Hard West’s rendering pipeline is sensitive to the quality pre-sets, but the RTX 4080 is never the bottleneck at lower resolutions—only at 4K does it start to assert its workload. The card’s 86th percentile ranking and near-tie with the SUPER variant materially reinforce that this GPU is a high‑end part, but the game itself does not demand that kind of silicon, and the performance is far from the card’s absolute limits.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core / 24-thread Zen 3 part that runs at 3.70 GHz base and can boost to 4.80 GHz. It uses the AM4 socket, was released in November 2020, and draws 105 W TDP. In synthetic tests, it posts a PassMark multithread score of 39,802 and a single-thread score of 3,469. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core and single-core results are 16,262 and 1,527, respectively. In the entire CPU database, it sits in the 87th percentile, which is on the same order of magnitude as its closest rivals: the Intel Core i7-14650HX (0.5% faster), the Intel Core Ultra 7 366H (0.3% higher), the Intel Core Ultra 7 356H (0.4% higher), and the AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 440 (0.4% higher). In other words, the 5900X is a class‑leading processor with plenty of compute power, but it trails the very latest mobile silicon by only a fraction of a percent.

Now, how does that CPU behave in Hard West? The game is a turn-based tactics title released in 2015, and its engine does not appear to utilize many cores with 12 cores, 24 threads, the game often runs at frame rates above 200 FPS at 1080p for Low and Medium presets. Specifically, 1080p Low averages 246 FPS, and 1080p Medium averages 229 FPS. The CPU is clearly not a wall for the GPU at those settings. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 155 FPS, which is a very high frame rate for any title. This tells us that even the single-threaded performance of the Ryzen 9 (PassMark single-thread 3,469) is sufficient to keep the game running at refresh rates that will be slightly limited by the GPU’s ability to fill the pixel grid. The CPU’s 12 cores give plenty of headroom for any memory subsystem load, but the game’s main loop does not need that many cores; what matters is that the single-core throughput is high enough to sustain a high frame rate when the GPU is not under full load. The data shows that at 1440p and 4K, the CPU impact is negligible—the FPS drops exactly follow the GPU’s pixel workload. Thus, from the numbers we have, the 5900X supplies more than enough processing for Hard West, and any frame rate differences between configurations are dictated by the GPU.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 1440p with High settings?

A: The average is 131 FPS at 2560×1440, High preset.

Q: Which resolution and settings give the highest average FPS?

A: At 1920×1080 with Low settings, the recorded average is 246 FPS, the highest in the dataset.

Q: What are the best and the worst 4K results?

A: At 3840×2160, the best average is 109 FPS on Low, and the worst is 51 FPS on Ultra.

Q: How does this combo rank in the entire test pool for Hard West?

A: The combination of the Ryzen 9 5900X and RTX 4080 ranks 317th out of 3,722 tested combos, placing it in the top 8.5% of all duos.

Q: What are their launch MSRPs?

A: The CPU launched at a $549 MSRP, and the GPU with a launch MSRP of $1,199 USD.

Q: At Medium preset, what are the minimum and maximum FPS at 1920×1080?

A: For Medium at 1080p, the min FPS is 194 and the max is 263.

How This Combo Ranks

The absolute position of this CPU+GPU pairing in the game’s test pool is 317 out of a total of 3,722 entries. That translates to roughly the 8.5% of the testable configurations— a high placement. Given that the RTX 4080 itself scores in the 86th percentile and the 5900X in the 87th, it is not surprising to see the pair land in the upper echelon for Hard West. The data doesn’t give a percentile directly, but the bracket is between the 8th and 9th decade of all-tested combos.

The rank is based on the measured average FPS across all tested settings and resolutions (though the actual process is behind the scenes). Since the game is a light-weight turn‑based title, many combos, even older and cheaper parts, likely can achieve very high frame rates, but the 5900X + RTX 4080 consistently delivers high numbers across all presets, which solidifies its place into the high 300s. For reference, the GPU’s closest rival is the RTX 4080 SUPER, with a 0.1% difference in average benchmark score; the CPU is also within 0.5% of its closest competitor. This suggests that swapping either component for its straight competitor would likely produce near-identical results in this particular game, though the combo rank is a single figure for the whole system.

In a turn-based title with modest graphics demands, there are many combos with similar performance, but the top 8.5% is a meaningful separation. The absolute scores shown in the earlier sections (131 FPS at 4K, for example) underline that the platform is extremely capable—but because other mid‑range parts can reach similar FPS on this engine, the rank is not as high as would be seen in a GPU‑heavy game like Cyberpunk or Call of Duty. Nonetheless, for Hard West, this pairing is clearly among the top performers in the dataset, indicating that users with this exact CPU/GPU combination will have to worry about no performance bottlenecks.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following measurements were taken on a system with Ryzen 9 5900X and GeForce RTX 4080. All averages are from the dataset. Min and max values are only available for Medium settings, so those restrictions apply.

| Resolution | Settings | Average FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |

|------------|----------|-------------|---------|---------|

| 1920×1080 | Low | 246 | - | - |

| 1920×1080 | Medium | 229 | 194 | 263 |

| 1920×1080 | High | 206 | - | - |

| 1920×1080 | Ultra | 155 | - | - |

| 2560×1440 | Low | 207 | - | - |

| 2560×1440 | Medium | 170 | 144 | 195 |

| 2560×1440 | High | 131 | - | - |

| 2560×1440 | Ultra | 98 | - | - |

| 3840×2160 | Low | 109 | - | - |

| 3840×2160 | Medium | 89 | 76 | 103 |

| 3840×2160 | High | 69 | - | - |

| 3840×2160 | Ultra | 51 | - | - |

These numbers show a consistent trend: every setting at 1080p exceeds the 1440p frame rate by a wide margin, but the drop when moving to 1440p is more moderate than that from 1440p to 4K. For example, switching from High 1080p (206) to High 1440p (131) loses 75 FPS, but High 1440p to High 4K (69) loses 62 FPS. The drop is steeper when going up a resolution, but not uniform. The Ultra preset shows the largest margins, from 155 to 98 to 51. The Medium preset yields the only min/max data—at 1080p it spans 194 to 263, at 1440p it’s 144 to 195, and at 4K it settles between 76 and 103. These bands suggest the game has occasional frame hitches (as indicated by the min), but not severe enough to drop below playable.

An important takeaway: the 4096×2160 average on Low (109 FPS) is still above 100, so users can hit 4K outdoors with a smooth refresh if they choose the Low preset. If the Ultra settings are important, 1080p Ultra and 1440p Ultra are both comfortable choices. At 4K Ultra the average is 51 FPS, which might be a borderline experience for some players, but it is still above 45 FPS.

These are the exact numbers plugged directly from the measurements without any additional inference. The dataset indicates that this CPU‑GPU combo offers a very fast hardware platform, especially at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K remaining playable but not maxed out across the board.