Hard West

Settings Recommendations

The measured frame-rate rows for Hard West show a clear hierarchy across the four quality presets. At 1920x1080, the Ultra preset delivers 114.9 FPS average, which is a substantial drop from the High preset's 156.4 FPS. The Medium preset sits between at 200.9 FPS, but the most striking observation is that Low reaches 246 FPS — a figure that far exceeds display refresh-rate capabilities of most monitors. The data indicates that High is the optimal preset at 1080p: it maintains a very high frame rate while presumably retaining more visual fidelity than Medium, and the gap to Ultra (41.5 FPS) is not justified by the diminishing return in this turn-based tactics title.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern repeats but with tighter margins. High produces 96 FPS, Medium 125.7 FPS, and Ultra 75.6 FPS. The Low preset at 157.9 FPS remains the ceiling, but High's 96 FPS is already comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. At this resolution, Medium offers the best balance — it is 29.7 FPS ahead of High while still being 50.2 FPS behind Low, suggesting that the additional visual settings in Medium do not impose a prohibitive cost. Ultra at 1440p falls to 75.6 FPS, which is playable but shows the preset's heavy demand on the hardware.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes dramatically. High averages 50.3 FPS, Medium 67.5 FPS, and Ultra drops to 41 FPS. Low remains the outlier at 83 FPS. The 4K data reveals that Ultra is only viable if the user accepts frame rates below 45 FPS, which is risky for a tactics game where camera movement and unit animations can feel stuttery. The Medium preset at 4K delivers 67.5 FPS — a 17.2 FPS improvement over High — making it the recommended setting for 4K displays. Across all resolutions, the Low preset consistently provides the highest frame rates, but the step from Low to Medium at 1080p only costs 45.1 FPS (from 246 to 200.9), which is a small price for the visual upgrade. The best experience per the measured rows is Medium at 1440p or 4K, and High at 1080p.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i3-12100F is a 4-core, 8-thread processor from the Alder Lake architecture, with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. Its benchmark profile shows a single-thread score of 893 in 3dmark_single_thread and a multi-thread score of 4023 in 3dmark_max_threads. In Cinebench R23, the processor scores 11912 multi-core and 1681 single-core. These numbers indicate a strong single-thread performer, which is relevant for Hard West's turn-based logic and AI pathfinding — tasks that rely heavily on single-core responsiveness rather than parallel throughput.

The CPU's 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 80 KB L1 per core help with rapid access to game state data, which is critical in a tactics title where each unit's action triggers complex decision trees. The 3dmark_2_threads score of 1659 and 3dmark_4_threads score of 2859 show that scaling from 2 to 4 threads is efficient, but the jump to 8 threads (4026) yields only marginal gains, confirming that the game does not heavily utilize more than 4 cores. This is consistent with the genre: turn-based tactics rarely need wide multi-threading, and the single-thread performance (passmark_single_thread score of 3444) is the dominant factor.

Comparing to nearest rivals in the CPU benchmark database, the i3-12100F has an average benchmark score of 13516, which is 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (13534) and 0.4% ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U (13462). The data shows the i3-12100F sits in the 72nd percentile of all CPUs, meaning it outperforms the majority of processors in general benchmarks. For Hard West specifically, the 4-core configuration is sufficient because the game's frame rates at 1080p Low (246 FPS) and even 4K Low (83 FPS) suggest the CPU is not the primary bottleneck. The boost clock of 4.30 GHz provides the necessary single-thread headroom for the game's logic, and the 8 threads handle background tasks without contention. The data indicates that the CPU's role is to feed the GPU consistently, and at 1080p, the 156.4 FPS High result shows the i3-12100F does not limit the RTX 3080 in this title.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 features 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s. Its base clock is 1440 MHz with a boost of 1710 MHz, and the memory operates at 19 Gbps effective. The GPU's passmark_g3d score of 25086 and 3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12 score of 4407 place it in the 80th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35787. The nearest rival data shows it is 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (35860) and 0.4% behind the AMD Radeon 880M (35646), indicating a tightly clustered performance tier.

In Hard West, the GPU's role becomes evident in the resolution scaling. At 1080p High, the RTX 3080 delivers 156.4 FPS, but at 4K High, that drops to 50.3 FPS — a 68% reduction. This steep decline points to the GPU being the limiting component at higher resolutions, as the CPU's workload remains constant while pixel count quadruples. The 10 GB VRAM is adequate for this 2015 title, as the game's textures are not demanding by modern standards, but the memory bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s helps maintain frame rates when the render target expands. The ultra preset at 4K (41 FPS) shows the GPU struggling with the combination of high resolution and maximum effects, while the low preset at 4K (83 FPS) demonstrates that the GPU can handle 4K when shader complexity is reduced.

The GPU's passmark_directx_11 score of 207 and directx_12 score of 100 indicate strong API support, though Hard West's age means it likely uses an older DirectX path. The 68 RT cores and 272 tensor cores are irrelevant for this title, but the raw compute (29.77 TFLOPS FP32) ensures that even at 4K Ultra, the GPU maintains 41 FPS — a playable rate for turn-based tactics where reaction time is less critical. The data shows that the RTX 3080 is over-provisioned for 1080p, where it exceeds 156 FPS on High, but the 4K results (50.3 FPS High, 67.5 FPS Medium) suggest that users targeting 4K should use Medium to stay above 60 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i3-12100F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 493rd out of 1699 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the top 29% of all configurations. This ranking is notable given the CPU's modest 4-core design and the GPU's high-end positioning. The data suggests that the combination is well-balanced for this game, as the CPU's strong single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 893) complements the GPU's raw throughput.

The rank of 493 out of 1699 means that 1206 combos perform worse, but also that 492 combos achieve higher frame rates. Given Hard West's turn-based nature, the frame rate differences at the top end are unlikely to matter — a combo ranked 100th might average 100 FPS at 4K Ultra while this combo scores 41 FPS, but both are fully playable. The measured data shows that the combo's best result (246 FPS at 1080p Low) is exceptional, and even the worst (41 FPS at 4K Ultra) remains above the threshold for a tactics game. The rank reflects the GPU's dominance in the pairing, as the CPU's percentile (72nd) is lower than the GPU's (80th), but the game's low thread utilization means the CPU's weaker multi-core scores (cinebench_r23_multicore of 11912) do not degrade performance.

The combination's position in the database is more about the GPU's 4K capability than the CPU's compute. At 1080p, the combo achieves 156.4 FPS on High, which would rank highly among all combos, but at 4K Ultra, the 41 FPS drags the average down. The data indicates that users of this combo should treat 4K as a medium-preset scenario, where the 67.5 FPS result is more representative of the hardware's true capability in this game.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS across resolutions shows a clear pattern of diminishing returns as pixel count increases. At 1080p High, the combo delivers 156.4 FPS; at 1440p High, it drops to 96 FPS (a 38.6% reduction); and at 4K High, it falls to 50.3 FPS (a 47.6% reduction from 1440p). This scaling curve is steep, indicating that the GPU is the primary constraint at higher resolutions, while the CPU's workload remains constant.

The Low preset shows a similar trend: 246 FPS at 1080p, 157.9 FPS at 1440p (a 35.8% drop), and 83 FPS at 4K (a 47.4% drop from 1440p). The consistency of these percentages across presets suggests that the resolution scaling is independent of quality settings — the GPU's fill rate and memory bandwidth are the limiting factors, not shader complexity. The Medium preset follows the same pattern: 200.9 FPS at 1080p, 125.7 FPS at 1440p (a 37.4% drop), and 67.5 FPS at 4K (a 46.3% drop from 1440p).

The Ultra preset exhibits the most severe scaling: 114.9 FPS at 1080p, 75.6 FPS at 1440p (a 34.2% drop), and 41 FPS at 4K (a 45.8% drop from 1440p). The 4K Ultra result of 41 FPS is the only measured point below 45 FPS, and it highlights that the RTX 3080's 10 GB VRAM and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are adequate but not excessive for this title at maximum settings. The data shows that the drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistently around 35-38%, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is consistently around 46-48%. This nonlinear scaling is typical of GPU-bound scenarios, where the pixel count quadruples from 1080p to 4K but the frame rate does not quarter — instead, it falls by roughly 68%, indicating that the GPU's memory bandwidth and ROP throughput (96 ROPs) provide some headroom.

The limiting component analysis: at 1080p, the CPU's single-thread performance (passmark_single_thread score of 3444) is sufficient to feed the GPU, as evidenced by the 246 FPS Low result. However, the 4K results (50.3 FPS High, 41 FPS Ultra) are clearly GPU-limited, as the CPU's workload does not change with resolution. The data suggests that the RTX 3080 is the bottleneck at 1440p and 4K, while the i3-12100F is never a limiting factor in this game — even the 4K Low result of 83 FPS is well above typical CPU-bound thresholds. The resolution scaling data therefore points to the GPU as the component to prioritize when adjusting settings for higher resolutions.