Hard West

The Intel Core i3-12100F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER delivers a remarkably fluid experience in Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015. The measured frame rates place this combo at rank 120 out of 1699 tested combinations, placing it in the top 7% of all systems evaluated. This is a strong showing for a processor that sits in the 72nd percentile among all CPUs, paired with a GPU in the 88th percentile among all graphics cards. The data suggests that this pairing is far more than adequate for the game's demands, with performance headroom that becomes evident at lower resolutions and settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame of 120 out of 1699 tested combinations places this system in the upper echelon of configurations for Hard West. This rank reflects the synergy between the four-core, eight-thread Intel Core i3-12100F and the Ada Lovelace-based RTX 4080 SUPER. While the CPU's average benchmark score of 13516 puts it just behind the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX (by 0.1%) and slightly ahead of the Intel Core i7-1250U (by 0.4%), its real-world gaming performance here is elevated by the GPU's massive compute capabilities. The RTX 4080 SUPER, with an average benchmark score of 53610, leads its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, by a slim 0.2% margin.

The ranking data indicates that this system is not bottlenecked by the processor in most scenarios. In fact, the CPU's nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-7700K, which it outperforms by 1.8%, showing that the modern Alder Lake architecture holds its own despite having fewer cores than some competitors. For a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, which typically does not stress multi-threaded performance as heavily as modern AAA shooters, this combination proves exceptionally capable, achieving frame rates that exceed the refresh rates of most standard monitors at 1440p and 1080p.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the high frame rates observed. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. This memory configuration is more than sufficient for Hard West's textures and geometry, even at 4K resolution. The GPU's boost clock of 2550 MHz, combined with its 10240 shading units, allows it to process the game's scenes with ease. The card's FP32 performance of 52.22 TFLOPS indicates raw compute power that far exceeds the requirements of a 2015 turn-based tactics title.

The data shows that the GPU's role becomes more critical as resolution increases. At 1080p, the CPU can keep up with the GPU's output, but at 4K, the RTX 4080 SUPER's sheer pixel-pushing ability—evidenced by its 285.6 GPixel/s pixel rate—drives the performance. The card's 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are underutilized in this game, as Hard West does not support ray tracing or DLSS, but they contribute to the GPU's overall benchmark dominance. The GPU's percentileVsAllGpus of 88 confirms that it is a top-tier part, and its average benchmark score of 53610 places it just 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M and 2.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 7700S. This headroom means the GPU is rarely the limiting factor until ultra settings are enabled.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Hard West?*

A: Based on the measured FPS, 1440p at High settings provides an excellent balance, delivering an average of 131.8 FPS, while 4K at High still offers a playable 69.2 FPS average.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Intel Core i3-12100F has an average benchmark score of 13516, which is 0.1% lower than the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX, but 0.4% higher than the Intel Core i7-1250U and 1.8% higher than the Intel Core i7-7700K.

Q: Is the RTX 4080 SUPER overkill for this game?

A: The data indicates yes for most settings. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 246.8 FPS average, but at 4K Ultra, it drops to 50.2 FPS average, showing that the GPU is fully utilized only at the most demanding settings.

Q: What is the GPU's closest competitor in benchmark scores?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER's average score of 53610 is just 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, making them effectively tied in synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Does the game favor multi-threaded CPUs?

A: The i3-12100F's 3DMark scores show a significant jump from 2 threads (1659) to 4 threads (2859), but only a modest gain to 8 threads (4026), suggesting the game scales well up to four cores but not beyond.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 1440p, High settings yield 131.8 FPS average, while Ultra drops to 96 FPS average, a difference of 35.8 FPS, indicating Ultra settings impose a noticeable penalty.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the combo achieves its highest frame rates, with Low settings producing an average of 246.8 FPS. Medium settings reduce this to 229.2 FPS, while High settings yield 204.6 FPS. Ultra settings at 1080p still deliver an impressive 155.8 FPS average, demonstrating that the system has ample headroom even with maximum quality at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance remains strong but shows the expected scaling. Low settings average 208 FPS, Medium settings average 170.5 FPS, and High settings average 131.8 FPS. Ultra settings at 1440p drop to 96 FPS average, which is still well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. At 3840x2160, the demands of 4K become apparent. Low settings average 110.8 FPS, Medium settings average 90.1 FPS, and High settings average 69.2 FPS. Ultra settings at 4K fall to 50.2 FPS average, which is the only configuration that dips below 60 FPS, suggesting that even this powerful GPU struggles with the most demanding preset at 4K.

The data shows a clear hierarchy: each step from Low to Ultra reduces performance, and each jump in resolution from 1080p to 1440p to 4K imposes a significant cost. The gap between Low and Ultra is consistent across resolutions, but the absolute frame rates remain high enough for playable experiences except at 4K Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals the limiting component in this system. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 246.8 FPS at 1080p to 208 FPS at 1440p (a 15.7% decrease) and then to 110.8 FPS at 4K (a 46.7% decrease from 1440p). This pattern indicates that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher resolutions, as the CPU's workload remains relatively constant while the GPU must render exponentially more pixels.

At High settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 204.6 FPS at 1080p, 131.8 FPS at 1440p (a 35.6% decrease), and 69.2 FPS at 4K (a 47.5% decrease from 1440p). The larger percentage drop from 1080p to 1440p at High settings compared to Low settings suggests that the GPU is being pushed harder as settings increase, making it the clear limiting factor. The CPU, with its modest 4 cores and 8 threads, is sufficient to feed the GPU at 1080p, but as resolution increases, the GPU's rendering load dominates.

The scaling behavior confirms that for Hard West, the RTX 4080 SUPER is the performance driver. The i3-12100F's 3DMark single-thread score of 893 and Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1681 indicate adequate per-core performance for this game's logic, but the GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 736.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth are what enable the high frame rates. At 4K Ultra, the system finally reaches its limit, with the 50.2 FPS average showing that even the RTX 4080 SUPER cannot maintain 60 FPS at maximum quality in this older title, likely due to the game's engine limitations rather than hardware shortcomings.