Hard West

The Intel Core i5-12400F pairs a 6-core, 12-thread Alder Lake-S design with a 2.50 GHz base clock and a 4.40 GHz boost clock. For a turn-based tactics game like Hard West, the CPU's workload is often less about raw sustained multi-threaded throughput and more about maintaining consistent frame pacing for game logic and AI turns. The benchmark data shows the processor’s 3DMark scores scale predictably from 1,699 with 2 threads to 5,912 with max threads, indicating solid scaling for a desktop part. In Cinebench R23, the multicore score of 16,518 versus a single-core score of 2,332 suggests that while the chip can handle parallel tasks effectively, its single-thread strength is what likely carries the bulk of the gameplay load. The CPU sits at the 77th percentile among all CPUs tested, with an average benchmark score of 19,221. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-8700K, posts an average score of 19,210, a delta of just 0.1%, meaning the two are effectively neck-and-neck in synthetic performance. This near-identical performance suggests that in Hard West, the i5-12400F’s six physical cores are more than sufficient to avoid becoming the primary bottleneck at most settings, as the game’s turn-based nature rarely demands the kind of sustained multi-core saturation seen in real-time strategy titles.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER carries 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its base clock of 1470 MHz and boost clock of 1650 MHz, combined with 2,176 shading units, provide a floating-point performance of 7.181 TFLOPS. For a game released in late 2015, Hard West is not visually demanding, but the measured frames still show the GPU’s influence clearly at higher resolutions. The card’s average benchmark score of 19,774 places it at the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN at 19,706 (a 0.3% delta), and it sits just 0.5% behind the RTX 2070. The data indicates that the RTX 2060 SUPER’s 8 GB VRAM is not a limiting factor here, as even at 4K Ultra the frame rate drops to 22.8 FPS, which is more likely a compute or fill-rate limitation than a memory capacity issue. The GPU’s pixel rate of 105.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s become more relevant as resolution scales, suggesting that the card’s raw throughput, not its memory size, dictates the performance ceiling in this title.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Examining the measured rows, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium delivers 127 FPS, which is a significant jump from the High preset’s 97.1 FPS, while still maintaining a smooth gameplay experience. At 1440p, Medium holds at 83.6 FPS, which remains well above the 60 FPS threshold for comfortable play. Even at 4K, Medium produces 45.1 FPS, which is playable for a turn-based game where exact frame timing is less critical. The High preset, in contrast, drops the 4K average to 32.7 FPS, and Ultra falls to a stutter-prone 22.8 FPS. Low settings, while offering the highest frame rates—156 FPS at 1080p and 53.9 FPS at 4K—sacrifice visual fidelity unnecessarily for a genre that does not require twitch reflexes. Benchmark results indicate that Medium is the sweet spot, providing a 30% improvement over High at 1080p (127 vs. 97.1) and a 33% improvement at 4K (45.1 vs. 32.7), while only slightly reducing visual quality. This makes Medium the recommended preset for players who want a stable experience without dialing back to the lowest visual tier.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

In the database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Intel Core i5-12400F and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1,207th out of 1,699 combos tested in Hard West. This places the combo in the lower third of all configurations, which is surprising given the individual component benchmarks. The CPU’s 77th percentile standing and the GPU’s 63rd percentile standing suggest that both parts are above average, yet their combination in this specific game yields a rank that is below the median. This discrepancy implies that Hard West may be more sensitive to other factors, such as memory latency or driver optimization, rather than just raw CPU or GPU compute power. The data shows that 492 other combos achieve higher frame rates, meaning many systems with ostensibly weaker components on paper manage to outperform this pair in practice. This lower rank serves as a reminder that synthetic benchmarks do not always translate directly to real-world game performance, and that the turn-based genre may reward different hardware characteristics than those highlighted by the 3DMark or Cinebench suites.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data shows a clear and consistent drop as resolution increases, but the rate of that drop varies by settings preset. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 156 at 1080p to 97.3 at 1440p, a 37.6% decrease, and then to 53.9 at 4K, a further 44.6% decrease from 1440p. This steep decline suggests that even at Low settings, the GPU is the primary limiting component, as the CPU has ample headroom to feed frames. At Ultra settings, the drop is more dramatic: 76.5 FPS at 1080p falls to 47.6 at 1440p (a 37.8% drop) and then to 22.8 at 4K (a 52.1% drop from 1440p). The increasing percentage drop at higher resolutions is a classic indicator of GPU-bound performance. The fact that the 1080p to 4K drop at Ultra is 70.2% (from 76.5 to 22.8) while at Low it is 65.4% (from 156 to 53.9) further confirms that the RTX 2060 SUPER’s rendering pipeline is the bottleneck. If the CPU were limiting, we would expect to see the frame rate plateau at lower resolutions, but the data shows no such plateau, even at 1080p Low with 156 FPS. This indicates that the i5-12400F is more than capable of keeping up with the GPU’s output across all tested configurations.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

At 1920x1080, the RTX 2060 SUPER and i5-12400F combination produces an average of 156 FPS on Low settings, 127 FPS on Medium, 97.1 FPS on High, and 76.5 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Ultra to High is 20.6 FPS, while the jump from High to Medium is 29.9 FPS, showing that the Medium preset offers the most substantial frame rate improvement for a single step down in visual quality. Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 97.3 FPS on Low, 83.6 FPS on Medium, 64.7 FPS on High, and 47.6 FPS on Ultra. At this resolution, the gap between Low and Medium narrows to 13.7 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns from lowering settings further. At 3840x2160, the averages fall to 53.9 FPS on Low, 45.1 FPS on Medium, 32.7 FPS on High, and 22.8 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Ultra result of 22.8 FPS is below the threshold for smooth gameplay, but the 4K Medium result of 45.1 FPS remains playable for a turn-based title. Across all resolutions, the Low preset consistently delivers the highest frame rates, but the Medium preset provides the best balance of performance and visual fidelity, as it stays above 45 FPS even at 4K while offering more detail than Low.

FAQ

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-12400F strong enough for Hard West, or does it bottleneck the GPU?

A: The benchmark data shows the CPU is not a bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 156 FPS, and the frame rate scales predictably with resolution, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor. The CPU’s single-thread performance, evidenced by a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 2,332, is more than adequate for this turn-based title.

Q: How does the RTX 2060 SUPER compare to its nearest rival in terms of average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 2060 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 19,774, which is 0.3% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN’s score of 19,706 and 0.5% higher than the RTX 2070’s score of 19,680. This puts it in a very tight performance band, with differences of less than 1% between these cards.

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1440p gaming on this system?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 83.6 FPS, which is well above the 60 FPS target. The High preset drops to 64.7 FPS, which is still playable, but the 18.9 FPS gain from lowering to Medium makes it the preferred choice for a smoother experience.

Q: Why does the combo rank 1,207th out of 1,699 even though the CPU and GPU have above-average percentiles?

A: The CPU is at the 77th percentile and the GPU is at the 63rd percentile, yet the combo ranks in the lower third for Hard West. This suggests that the game may be sensitive to other hardware factors beyond raw compute, such as memory bandwidth or driver overhead, which are not captured by the synthetic benchmarks.

Q: Can this system handle 4K Ultra settings?

A: The measured data shows 4K Ultra produces an average of 22.8 FPS, which is below the threshold for smooth gameplay. For 4K, the Medium preset at 45.1 FPS is the highest playable option, as High drops to 32.7 FPS.

Q: How much performance is gained by switching from High to Low settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the average FPS increases from 97.1 on High to 156 on Low, a gain of 58.9 FPS, which is a 60.7% improvement. This is the largest relative gain between any two adjacent settings presets at this resolution.