Hard West

Settings Recommendations

For Hard West, the measured data shows a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and playable frame rates when pairing the Intel Core i5-11400F with the AMD Radeon RX 570. At 1080p, the Medium preset delivers 60.4 FPS average, which is the only settings tier at this resolution that crosses the 60 FPS threshold while maintaining a respectable visual quality. The High preset at 1080p drops to 50.7 FPS, still playable but with a 16% reduction in smoothness compared to Medium. Low at 1080p reaches 78.6 FPS, offering headroom for competitive play or frame pacing stability, but sacrifices the visual detail that a turn-based tactics title benefits from.

At 1440p, the situation becomes more constrained. Medium produces 37.7 FPS, which is below the ideal smoothness target, while Low at 47.2 FPS is the only preset that remains comfortably playable. High at 1440p falls to 30 FPS exactly, which is borderline for a tactics game, and Ultra at 25 FPS is noticeably sluggish. For 4K, no preset delivers playable performance; the best result is Low at 26.1 FPS, and Ultra plummets to 13.1 FPS.

The optimal experience per the measured rows is 1080p Medium. It provides the best balance, yielding 60.4 FPS, which is 19% faster than High and 67% faster than Ultra at the same resolution. Users prioritizing higher resolutions should select 1440p Low (47.2 FPS) as the only acceptable compromise, while 4K is not recommended for active play. The data strongly indicates that this combo is best suited for 1080p gaming with moderate settings.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1168 MHz with a boost clock of 1244 MHz, and its 2048 shading units produce 5.095 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The memory runs at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective), which is adequate for the texture and geometry loads typical of Hard West's stylized environments.

In this game, the GPU's role is significant, as evidenced by the frame rate collapse at higher resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 60.4 FPS, but moving to 1440p Medium drops to 37.7 FPS, a 38% reduction. This scaling pattern indicates that the RX 570's rasterization throughput, rather than the CPU, is the limiting factor. The GPU's pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s are being saturated as resolution increases, particularly at Ultra settings.

The 4 GB VRAM capacity is also relevant. Hard West's Ultra preset at 4K yields only 13.1 FPS, which suggests that both memory bandwidth and capacity are strained at that extreme. The GPU sits at the 74th percentile among all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (0.2% faster) and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (0.2% faster), which is notable given the generational gap. However, the RX 570's performance in this title is constrained by its age, and the data shows that it can handle 1080p Medium comfortably but struggles beyond that.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a steep performance cliff. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 60.4 at 1080p to 37.7 at 1440p, and then to 22.1 at 4K. That represents a 63% reduction from 1080p to 4K. For Low settings, the progression is 78.6 to 47.2 to 26.1, a 67% decline. High settings go from 50.7 at 1080p to 30 at 1440p to 16 at 4K, a 68% drop. Ultra is the most punishing, falling from 36.2 to 25 to 13.1, a 64% reduction.

This consistent scaling pattern, where every preset loses roughly two-thirds of its performance from 1080p to 4K, points to the GPU as the primary bottleneck. The i5-11400F, with its 12 threads and boost clock of 4.40 GHz, is unlikely to be the constraint in a turn-based tactics game where draw calls and AI logic are not exceptionally demanding. The CPU's benchmark percentiles (75th among all CPUs) and its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 14372 support this interpretation.

The 1440p to 4K transition is particularly harsh. At High settings, the drop from 30 to 16 FPS is a 47% reduction, while the 1080p to 1440p drop for the same preset is 41%. The pixel count increase from 1440p to 4K is larger than from 1080p to 1440p, so this is expected, but it confirms that the RX 570's fillrate limits are being reached. The data suggests that users should stay at 1080p for any preset above Low, as the performance penalty for higher resolutions is disproportionate.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a wide spread across settings. Low delivers 78.6 FPS, Medium produces 60.4 FPS, High yields 50.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to 36.2 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 42.4 FPS, or a 54% performance difference, which is substantial. Medium to High is a 9.7 FPS drop, while High to Ultra is a 14.5 FPS drop, indicating that Ultra imposes a disproportionately heavy load.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern persists but with lower absolute values. Low achieves 47.2 FPS, Medium reaches 37.7 FPS, High hits 30 FPS, and Ultra manages 25 FPS. The Low to Ultra spread is 22.2 FPS, a 47% reduction. Notably, High at 1440p (30 FPS) is nearly identical to Ultra at 1080p (36.2 FPS) in relative terms, suggesting that the Ultra preset at 1080p and High at 1440p are comparable in GPU load.

At 3840x2160, all presets are below playable thresholds. Low is 26.1 FPS, Medium is 22.1 FPS, High is 16 FPS, and Ultra is 13.1 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 13 FPS, which is smaller in absolute terms than at lower resolutions, but the percentage difference (50%) is consistent. The 4K results are uniformly poor, with even Low failing to reach 30 FPS, which confirms that this combo is not viable for 4K gaming.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-11400F with AMD Radeon RX 570 combination ranks 1609 out of 1699 tested combos for Hard West. This places it in the bottom 5.3% of all configurations, which is a low position for a game that is not graphically demanding by modern standards. The rank reflects the GPU's age and its inability to handle higher resolutions, as the CPU is relatively capable.

The i5-11400F itself scores in the 75th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17181. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (0% delta), Intel Core i7-1260P (-0.2%), and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (-0.2%), all of which are within 0.2% of its performance. This indicates that the CPU is more than sufficient for the game's logic and AI processing.

The RX 570, however, sits at the 74th percentile among GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30158. Its nearest rivals are surprisingly modern: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (0.2% faster), AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (0.2% faster), and NVIDIA Tesla M60 (0.6% faster). The fact that a 2017 GPU with 4 GB of VRAM benchmarks within 0.8% of these newer cards in synthetic tests, yet ranks so poorly in Hard West, suggests that the game's engine is particularly sensitive to the RX 570's architectural limitations.

The combo's rank of 1609 out of 1699 is driven by the GPU's performance at 4K and Ultra settings, where it is clearly outclassed. At 1080p Medium, the experience is acceptable, but the overall ranking is pulled down by the high-resolution results. Users with this combo should manage expectations: it is a low-tier configuration for Hard West, suitable for 1080p play at medium settings, but not for higher resolutions or maximum visual fidelity.