Hard West

The Intel Core i5-11400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 ranks 1398th out of 1699 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the lower half of the database. This position is heavily influenced by the GPU’s 58th percentile standing among all tested graphics cards, while the CPU’s 75th percentile rank provides a stronger foundation. The combination delivers playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, but 4K performance falls short of smooth gameplay, indicating the RTX 2060 is the primary constraint in this turn-based tactics title.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s 1398th place out of 1699 combos reflects a pairing where the CPU outclasses the GPU in relative benchmark standing. The Core i5-11400F sits at the 75th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17181, nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (17189) and Intel Core i7-1260P (17212). The RTX 2060, however, falls to the 58th percentile among all GPUs with an average score of 16074, trailing the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 by 1.7% and leading the AMD Radeon RX 7600S by 0.5%. This gap explains why the combo ranks below the midpoint despite the CPU’s solid standing. In Hard West specifically, the measured frame rates show the GPU becoming the bottleneck at higher resolutions, dragging the overall combo rank down relative to pairings with stronger graphics hardware.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060’s 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus delivers 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves sufficient for 1080p and 1440p in Hard West but insufficient for smooth 4K operation. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1365 MHz and boosts to 1680 MHz, with 1920 shading units and 48 ROPs driving pixel throughput. Its 30 RT cores and 240 tensor cores are present but largely irrelevant for this turn-based tactics title, which does not leverage ray tracing or DLSS features. The measured data confirms the GPU’s limits: at 4K Ultra, average FPS collapses to 21.3, while at 1080p Low it reaches 145 FPS. The 6 GB VRAM capacity does not appear to be a limiting factor in any tested configuration, as frame rates scale consistently with resolution and settings rather than showing sudden drops from memory exhaustion. The GPU’s 58th percentile rank aligns with its performance class, and the 12 nm Turing architecture with 10,800 million transistors provides adequate compute for this game’s modest graphical demands.

Settings Recommendations

The Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all resolutions in Hard West. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 115.9 FPS, which is 27% faster than High (91.3 FPS) and 41% faster than Ultra (68.4 FPS). Moving to 1440p Medium, the average drops to 73 FPS, still comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold, while High at 1440p delivers 58.7 FPS, marginally below ideal smoothness. Ultra settings are only viable at 1080p, where 68.4 FPS remains playable, but at 1440p Ultra falls to 42.1 FPS and at 4K Ultra to an unplayable 21.3 FPS. Low settings provide the highest frame rates—145 FPS at 1080p and 88 FPS at 1440p—but sacrifice visual fidelity unnecessarily given Medium’s strong performance. For players prioritizing smoothness, Medium at 1440p is the sweet spot; for maximum visual quality without dropping below 60 FPS, High at 1080p is the ceiling.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo scales cleanly across presets: Low averages 145 FPS, Medium 115.9 FPS, High 91.3 FPS, and Ultra 68.4 FPS. The 53% drop from Low to Ultra demonstrates the GPU’s headroom at this resolution, with even the most demanding preset remaining playable. At 2560x1440, performance tightens: Low hits 88 FPS, Medium 73 FPS, High 58.7 FPS, and Ultra 42.1 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra widens to 52%, but the absolute numbers show the RTX 2060 struggling to maintain 60 FPS beyond Medium. At 3840x2160, the picture deteriorates sharply: Low averages 48.6 FPS, Medium 36.6 FPS, High 33.1 FPS, and Ultra 21.3 FPS. No preset at 4K reaches 60 FPS, and even Low falls below the playable threshold for many users. The data shows a consistent pattern: each settings tier costs roughly 20-25% performance, and each resolution step costs a similar amount, reflecting the GPU’s balanced but limited compute capabilities.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals the GPU as the clear limiting component. At High settings, performance falls from 91.3 FPS at 1080p to 58.7 FPS at 1440p (a 36% reduction) and then to 33.1 FPS at 4K (a 64% reduction from 1080p). At Low settings, the same scaling shows 145 FPS at 1080p, 88 FPS at 1440p (39% drop), and 48.6 FPS at 4K (66% drop). This consistent 36-39% penalty from 1080p to 1440p and an additional 44-45% penalty from 1440p to 4K indicates the GPU is being saturated by pixel count. If the CPU were the bottleneck, frame rates would show smaller differences between resolutions, particularly at lower settings where the GPU has less work. The fact that Low settings at 4K still only reach 48.6 FPS—barely half of 1080p Low—confirms the RTX 2060’s pixel throughput limits, not any CPU constraint. The 48 ROPs and 80.64 GPixel/s pixel rate simply cannot sustain high resolutions in this title.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run Hard West at 60 FPS on 1080p?

A: Yes, at Medium settings the average is 115.9 FPS, and even Ultra maintains 68.4 FPS, so all presets at 1080p exceed the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: Is the RTX 2060 enough for 1440p gameplay?

A: Medium settings deliver 73 FPS, which is smooth, but High drops to 58.7 FPS and Ultra to 42.1 FPS, so only Low and Medium presets are recommended at 1440p.

Q: Why does 4K performance drop so drastically?

A: The RTX 2060’s 48 ROPs and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth cannot handle the pixel workload; even Low settings at 4K only reach 48.6 FPS, while Ultra falls to 21.3 FPS.

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

A: The Core i5-11400F scores 17181 on average, nearly matching the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (17189) and Intel Core i7-1260P (17212), with a 0.2% delta from both.

Q: Which settings preset should I avoid entirely?

A: Ultra at 4K is unplayable at 21.3 FPS, and Ultra at 1440p at 42.1 FPS is also below smooth thresholds, so these combinations should be avoided.

Q: Does the 6 GB VRAM limit performance in Hard West?

A: No, the frame rates scale consistently across resolutions and settings without sudden drops, indicating VRAM capacity is sufficient for this title’s requirements.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F provides 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 2.60 GHz and boost up to 4.40 GHz, built on Intel’s 14 nm Rocket Lake architecture with a 65 W TDP. Its 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 51.2 GB/s dual-channel DDR4 memory bandwidth support the GPU effectively in Hard West, a turn-based tactics game that does not demand high thread counts. The CPU’s benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 14372, while single-core reaches 2029, and PassMark multithread hits 16908 with a single-thread score of 2981. The 75th percentile ranking places it above the Intel Core i5-1240U by 0.2% and essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700U, indicating ample headroom for this game’s AI and logic calculations. The measured FPS data confirms the CPU is not the bottleneck: at 1080p Low, the combo reaches 145 FPS, showing the processor can feed the GPU far beyond what the RTX 2060 can render at higher settings. The CPU’s 3DMark scores—5652 at max threads and 868 single-thread—support this conclusion, as even the weakest GPU-bound scenarios at 4K Ultra (21.3 FPS) show no signs of CPU-induced stutter or frame drops. This processor’s 12 threads and 4.40 GHz boost clock provide more than enough compute for Hard West’s turn-based mechanics, leaving the GPU as the sole performance limiter in every tested configuration.