Hard West

FAQ

Q: What average frame rate does the Intel Core i3-12100F + Intel Arc B570 combo achieve in Hard West at 1080p with High settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with High settings, this combo produces an average of 84 FPS. This is the most balanced preset at that resolution, offering smooth gameplay with a substantial performance margin over the 63 FPS average seen at Ultra settings.

Q: How does the combo's performance at 1440p compare to its 1080p results?

A: Dropping from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 reduces the average frame rate at High settings from 84 FPS to 53 FPS, a decrease of 31 FPS. At Low settings, the drop is steeper, from 134 FPS down to 85 FPS, indicating that the GPU becomes a more significant limiting factor as resolution increases.

Q: Is this combo capable of running Hard West at 4K resolution?

A: The data shows that at 3840x2160, the combo achieves an average of 28 FPS on High settings and 44 FPS on Low settings. While the Low preset is playable, the High preset falls below the 30 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay, and the Ultra preset averages only 21 FPS.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1080p gameplay with this hardware?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 yields an average of 110 FPS, with minimum and maximum readings of 93 and 126 FPS respectively. This provides a significantly higher frame rate than High (84 FPS) while still offering better visual quality than Low (134 FPS), making it the optimal balance for most players.

Q: How does the Intel Arc B570's average benchmark score compare to its nearest rival?

A: The GPU has an average benchmark score of 20556, which is nearly identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile's score of 20534, a delta of 0.1%. It also sits within a narrow band of its other rivals, including the Intel Arc A750 at 20582 (-0.1%) and the AMD Radeon R9 M390X at 20662 (-0.5%).

Q: Where does this CPU+GPU combination rank among all tested combos for Hard West?

A: The combo ranks 2360 out of 2949 tested combinations, placing it in the lower-middle portion of the database. This rank reflects its capability to handle the game at lower resolutions and settings comfortably, while struggling at higher resolutions with demanding presets.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data for Hard West with the Intel Core i3-12100F and Intel Arc B570 reveals a clear hierarchy of playable settings depending on the target resolution. For 1920x1080, the Medium preset is the standout choice. It delivers an average of 110 FPS with a minimum of 93 FPS, ensuring that frame times remain consistent even during tactical sequences with multiple on-screen elements. The jump from Medium to High costs 26 FPS on average, while the visual improvements may not justify that loss for many users. The Low preset at 134 FPS is exceptionally fast but sacrifices graphical fidelity that the game's atmospheric art style benefits from. Ultra at 63 FPS is technically playable, but the 47 FPS gap between Ultra and Medium is substantial, and the lower average leaves less headroom for demanding scenes.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again provides the best experience, averaging 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS. This keeps the gameplay smooth and responsive, which is critical for a turn-based tactics title where camera movement and unit selection need to feel fluid. The High preset at 53 FPS is workable but begins to feel less consistent, and the Low preset at 85 FPS is the only other option that maintains a high frame rate. The Ultra preset at 1440p drops to 40 FPS, which is a significant compromise for marginal visual gains.

For 3840x2160, the situation changes dramatically. No preset achieves a truly comfortable frame rate. The Low preset at 44 FPS is the only option that stays above the 30 FPS playability threshold, and even then, the margin is thin. Medium drops to 36 FPS, High falls to 28 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 21 FPS. Given these numbers, the recommended approach for 4K is to use the Low preset if resolution is non-negotiable, but the data strongly suggests that 1440p Medium is the sweet spot for this hardware. The combination of a 4-core CPU and a mid-range GPU cannot sustain high visual quality at 4K in this title, so prioritizing frame rate over resolution yields the better overall experience.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies in this system. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 84 FPS at 1080p to 53 FPS at 1440p, a 37% reduction, and then to 28 FPS at 4K, an additional 47% reduction from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario: as the pixel count increases, the rendering load on the Intel Arc B570 grows proportionally, and the CPU's 4 cores and 8 threads are able to keep up with the demands of feeding the GPU at these resolutions.

The Low settings data provides further evidence. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 134 FPS, which indicates that the CPU is capable of driving very high frame rates when the GPU's workload is light. At 1440p Low, the average drops to 85 FPS, and at 4K Low, it falls to 44 FPS. The consistent drop at each resolution step, even with minimal graphical load, confirms that the GPU's raw throughput is the primary constraint as resolution increases. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see frame rates plateau or become erratic at higher resolutions, but instead the scaling remains smooth and predictable.

The fact that the 1080p Low preset reaches 134 FPS while the 1080p Ultra preset only manages 63 FPS highlights that the GPU is also heavily taxed by the game's higher settings. The gap between Low and Ultra at the same resolution is 71 FPS, which is larger than the gap between 1080p Low and 1440p Low (49 FPS). This suggests that both resolution and settings independently impose significant loads on the GPU, and the CPU has enough headroom to avoid becoming a bottleneck in either case. For turn-based tactics, where frame rates above 60 FPS are often unnecessary, the limiting factor is clearly the GPU's ability to render the scene, not the processor's ability to compute game logic.

Measured FPS Breakdown

Looking at the 1920x1080 results first, the data shows a wide spread across the four settings presets. The Low preset delivers an average of 134 FPS, which is the highest figure recorded for this combo at any resolution. The Medium preset averages 110 FPS, with a minimum of 93 FPS and a maximum of 126 FPS, indicating a stable performance envelope. The High preset drops to 84 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 63 FPS. This progression from Low to Ultra represents a performance degradation of 71 FPS, or roughly 53% of the Low preset's average, which is a substantial cost for the higher visual quality.

At 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute numbers. The Low preset averages 85 FPS, maintaining smooth gameplay. The Medium preset averages 69 FPS, with minimum and maximum readings of 59 and 80 FPS, respectively. The High preset achieves 53 FPS, which is still within the range of playability for a turn-based game, though it may feel less responsive during camera pans. The Ultra preset drops to 40 FPS, which is the first preset at this resolution to fall below the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider ideal, but it remains above the 30 FPS minimum for basic playability.

At 3840x2160, the performance falls off significantly across all presets. The Low preset averages 44 FPS, which is the only 4K result above 40 FPS. The Medium preset averages 36 FPS, with a minimum of 31 FPS and a maximum of 42 FPS, showing that the frame rate can dip close to the edge of playability. The High preset averages 28 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 21 FPS. None of the 4K results, except possibly Low, provide a consistently smooth experience, and the Ultra preset at 21 FPS is likely to feel sluggish even in a genre that does not require fast reflexes. The data clearly indicates that 4K is not a practical resolution for this combo in Hard West, and users should target 1080p or 1440p for the best results.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570 is the dominant component in determining frame rates for this combo in Hard West. Its 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus provides 380.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game's textures and geometry at 1080p and 1440p, but the 4K results suggest that the memory interface and raw compute throughput become limiting factors at higher pixel counts. The GPU's base and boost clocks are both 2500 MHz, and it has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units. These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s, which are the metrics that directly influence how quickly the GPU can fill the screen with rendered frames.

The benchmark data for the Arc B570 shows an average score of 20556, placing it in the 65th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile, scores 20534, a delta of 0.1%, meaning the two are effectively tied in synthetic benchmarks. The Intel Arc A750 scores 20582, also within 0.1% of the B570. This close grouping suggests that the B570 is a mid-range part that punches at a consistent level, but it is not capable of the high-end performance needed for 4K gaming in demanding titles. The game's measured FPS data confirms this: at 4K Ultra, the GPU only manages 21 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS minimum for playability.

The GPU's role in this combo is further highlighted by the scaling of frame rates with settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 71 FPS, which is a massive gap that reflects the GPU's sensitivity to the game's graphical options. At 4K, the same settings gap is only 23 FPS (44 FPS Low versus 21 FPS Ultra), indicating that the GPU is so heavily loaded at that resolution that even the lowest settings cannot free up enough headroom to achieve high frame rates. This behavior is typical of a GPU that is the primary bottleneck, and it underscores that the Arc B570 is best suited for 1080p and 1440p gaming in Hard West, with 4K reserved for players who prioritize resolution over smoothness.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F provides the processing foundation for this combo, and its 4 cores and 8 threads are sufficient for Hard West's turn-based tactics gameplay. The CPU has a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz, which allows it to handle single-threaded tasks efficiently. Its 12 MB of shared L3 cache is adequate for the game's logic, and the 10 nm process node keeps power consumption reasonable with a 58 W TDP. The CPU's benchmark results show a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 11860 and a single-core score of 1674, indicating that it has solid performance for its class, though it is not a high-end part.

In the context of Hard West, the CPU's role is primarily to manage game state, unit AI, and input processing, which are not heavily parallel workloads. The 4-core design is well-suited for this, as the game likely does not scale beyond a handful of threads. The measured FPS data supports this: at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 134 FPS, which is high enough to suggest that the CPU is not holding back the GPU at lower settings. However, the 4K results show that even with the CPU operating well within its limits, the GPU cannot deliver playable frame rates, proving that the processor is not the limiting factor in this system.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 68 among all processors places it in the upper two-thirds of the database, and its average benchmark score of 13494 is nearly identical to the Intel Core 3 N355 at 13492 (0% delta) and the Intel Core i5-9500 at 13452 (0.3% delta). This means the i3-12100F is a competitive budget processor that holds its own against older mid-range parts. For Hard West, the CPU's performance is more than adequate, and the data indicates that players should focus on GPU settings to improve frame rates rather than worrying about CPU limitations. The 4-core, 8-thread configuration is a good match for this genre, where the computational demands are modest and the GPU does the heavy lifting for visual rendering.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i3-12100F + Intel Arc B570 combination ranks 2360 out of 2949 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the 20th percentile of all configurations. This is a below-average ranking that reflects the GPU's limitations at higher resolutions and settings. The rank is heavily influenced by the 4K results, where the combo struggles to maintain playable frame rates, and the 1440p Ultra result of 40 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target that many players prefer. However, the ranking does not tell the whole story, as the combo performs admirably at 1080p and 1440p with Medium or High settings, where it delivers smooth and enjoyable gameplay.

Compared to other combos in the database, this pairing sits in the lower-middle range, which is consistent with the individual component performance. The GPU's 65th percentile ranking is higher than the combo's overall ranking, suggesting that the CPU is also a minor contributor to the low rank. The i3-12100F's 68th percentile ranking is respectable, but when paired with a mid-range GPU, the combination does not reach the heights of higher-end systems. The combo's rank of 2360 indicates that there are over 500 tested configurations that outperform it, likely featuring stronger GPUs or CPUs, or both.

The practical implication of this rank is that users should temper their expectations for Hard West at high resolutions. The combo is capable of delivering a good experience at 1080p and 1440p, but it is not designed for 4K gaming. The data shows that the best performance is achieved at 1080p Medium, which yields 110 FPS, and 1440p Medium, which yields 69 FPS. These are the settings where the combo's rank is most favorable, as it can compete with higher-end systems that may be bottlenecked by other factors. For players who prioritize smooth frame rates over maximum visual fidelity, this combo offers a reasonable experience, but the rank serves as a reminder that it is not a top-tier configuration for this title.