Hard West

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination delivers a compelling experience in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. The data shows a system that is overwhelmingly capable at this game's standard resolutions, with frame rates that remain fluid even under maximum load. The measured results reveal a clear performance hierarchy driven by both resolution and graphical presets, with the CPU demonstrating significant headroom that is often constrained by the GPU's output at lower settings.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and clearly indicates a shift in the bottleneck. At 1080p with Low settings, the system achieves an average of 246 FPS. This high frame rate suggests that the CPU is doing the heavy lifting, pushing the GPU to its absolute limit. Moving to 1440p at the same Low preset, the average drops to 155 FPS, a substantial 37% reduction. This is a significant drop, but the system remains exceptionally fast. At 4K Low, the average further declines to 82 FPS, which is still highly playable but represents a 47% reduction from the 1440p figure.

The scaling pattern is even more telling when considering higher settings. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 155 FPS at 1080p to 98 FPS at 1440p (a 37% drop) and then to 51 FPS at 4K (a 48% drop from 1440p). This linear scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions. The game's visual complexity, even for a turn-based title, is enough to saturate the RTX 3080's capabilities at 4K. The data strongly suggests that while the CPU is more than capable at 1080p, the GPU becomes the limiting component as resolution increases. The performance gap between 1440p and 4K is consistently larger than the gap between 1080p and 1440p, indicating that the 4K resolution places a disproportionately heavy load on the graphics card. The result is that 4K gaming is possible, but at a significant frame rate cost compared to lower resolutions.

FAQ

*Q: Can this system run Hard West at 4K with the Ultra preset?*

A: Yes, it can run at 4K Ultra, but the average frame rate is 38 FPS. This is a playable frame rate for a turn-based tactics game, where twitch reactions are not critical, but it is the lowest measured average across all tested configurations.

Q: What is the best resolution for a high refresh rate monitor?

A: The data shows that at 1080p with High settings, the system produces an average of 155 FPS. At 1440p High, the frame rate drops to 98 FPS. For a 144Hz monitor, 1080p is the clear choice, while 1440p is better suited for a 100Hz or 120Hz display.

Q: How does the RTX 3080's performance in this game compare to its closest rivals?

A: The RTX 3080 has an average benchmark score of 23172, which is 0.3% lower than the NVIDIA P106-100 and 0.4% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 6600M. These deltas are negligible, indicating that in synthetic tests, these cards perform nearly identically.

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 9900X3D a bottleneck for the RTX 3080 in this game?

A: At 1080p with Low settings, the system reaches 246 FPS, suggesting the CPU is pushing the GPU to its maximum. However, as resolution increases, the frame rate drops significantly, indicating the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck. The CPU is not a limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Q: What are the minimum frame rates at Medium settings?

A: The measured data includes minimum FPS values only for the Medium preset. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 171 FPS. At 1440p Medium, it is 108 FPS, and at 4K Medium, it is 57 FPS. These minimums are all well above playable thresholds.

Q: How does the CPU's multi-threaded performance compare to its nearest rival?

A: The Ryzen 9 9900X3D has an average benchmark score of 54762, which is 1.3% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K and 2.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-14700F. It is 0.6% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is a high-end graphics card built on the Ampere architecture. Its role in Hard West is to render the game's environments and character models, and the data shows it performs this task admirably. The card features 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s. For a game released in 2015, this memory configuration is more than sufficient to handle the texture assets at any resolution and preset, even at 4K Ultra.

The GPU's clock speeds are a base of 1440 MHz and a boost of 1710 MHz. These clocks, combined with its 8704 shading units, allow for substantial raw compute throughput. The benchmark results show that the RTX 3080 has a PassMark G3D score of 25086, placing it in the 68th percentile of all GPUs. This score is remarkably close to its nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA P106-100 (23249) and the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (23273), with performance deltas of -0.3% and -0.4%, respectively. This indicates that in synthetic tests, the RTX 3080's performance is essentially tied with these other cards.

In the context of Hard West, the GPU's strength is most evident in the frame rate scaling. The transition from 1080p to 1440p at High settings yields a 37% performance drop, and the transition to 4K yields another 48% drop. This consistent scaling demonstrates that the GPU is the primary component driving performance at these resolutions. The card's 10 GB of VRAM is likely not a limiting factor, as even at 4K Ultra, the game runs, albeit at 38 FPS. The data suggests that the GPU's compute power, rather than its memory capacity, is the main constraint at higher resolutions and settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear guide for optimizing the experience in Hard West. For players targeting the highest possible frame rates, the Low preset at 1080p yields an average of 246 FPS, which is far beyond what any display can show. However, this preset likely sacrifices visual fidelity. A more balanced approach is the High preset, which delivers 155 FPS at 1080p and 98 FPS at 1440p. This provides a significant visual upgrade over Low while maintaining high, fluid frame rates.

The Ultra preset offers the highest visual quality, but it comes at a steep performance cost. At 1080p, it achieves 116 FPS, which is still excellent. At 1440p, it drops to 73 FPS, which is good for a tactics game. However, at 4K, the Ultra preset drops to 38 FPS. For a turn-based title, this is playable, but for a smoother experience, the High preset at 4K (51 FPS) or Medium preset at 4K (67 FPS) would be preferable. The Medium preset provides a good middle ground, with an average of 201 FPS at 1080p and 127 FPS at 1440p, and it is the only setting with measured minimum frame rates, which are 171 FPS at 1080p and 108 FPS at 1440p.

Given the data, the High preset is the recommended choice for the best balance of visual quality and performance. At 1440p, it delivers an average of 98 FPS, which is smooth and responsive. If a player has a 4K display and prioritizes visual fidelity, the High preset at 51 FPS is a better choice than Ultra at 38 FPS, as the performance difference is more noticeable than the incremental visual improvement. The Medium preset is a strong alternative for those who want to ensure a minimum frame rate floor, as it is the only preset with recorded minimums.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following data is taken directly from the measured results for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination.

1920x1080:

• Low: Average 246 FPS.
• Medium: Average 201 FPS, with a minimum of 171 FPS and a maximum of 231 FPS.
• High: Average 155 FPS.
• Ultra: Average 116 FPS.

2560x1440:

• Low: Average 155 FPS.
• Medium: Average 127 FPS, with a minimum of 108 FPS and a maximum of 146 FPS.
• High: Average 98 FPS.
• Ultra: Average 73 FPS.

3840x2160:

• Low: Average 82 FPS.
• Medium: Average 67 FPS, with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS.
• High: Average 51 FPS.
• Ultra: Average 38 FPS.

The data reveals a consistent pattern: for each preset, the average FPS roughly halves when moving from 1080p to 4K. For example, at High settings, the performance drops from 155 FPS to 51 FPS, a 67% reduction. The Medium preset shows a similar trend, going from 201 FPS to 67 FPS. The Low preset also scales predictably, from 246 FPS to 82 FPS. This consistency underscores the GPU-bound nature of the game at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture. It features a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. For a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, which typically does not have demanding AI or physics simulations, this processor provides an immense amount of computational headroom. The benchmark data confirms this, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 47737 and a single-core score of 6739. This places the CPU in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54762.

The CPU's role in Hard West is to manage game logic, unit pathfinding, and the overall simulation, which is not particularly demanding. This is evidenced by the extremely high frame rates at 1080p Low, where the system achieves 246 FPS. At this setting, the GPU is likely the limiting factor, as the CPU is able to feed it enough frames to reach its maximum output. The 3DMark single-thread score of 1269 and 2-thread score of 2512 show that the CPU has excellent single-core performance, which is often more important for game logic than raw multi-core throughput.

Comparing the CPU to its nearest rivals, it performs very closely. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D's average score of 54762 is only 0.6% lower than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF's 55093. It is 1.3% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54053) and 2.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-14700F (53620). These marginal differences indicate that in synthetic benchmarks, these processors are nearly identical. In a game like Hard West, this CPU will not be a bottleneck at any resolution. The performance scaling observed is almost entirely attributable to the GPU's workload, confirming that the Ryzen 9 9900X3D provides a stable, high-performance foundation that allows the RTX 3080 to operate without any CPU-induced limitations.