Hard West

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i5-12400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER secures the 127th position out of 1,699 tested combinations in Hard West, placing it in the top 7.5% of all configs. This is a commanding placement for a turn-based tactics title, where frame pacing and consistency often matter more than raw peak throughput. The CPU itself sits at the 77th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 19,221. Its nearest rivals in synthetic testing are the Intel Core i7-8700K (0.1% ahead), Intel Core i5-1335U (0.3% ahead), AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS (0.7% behind), and AMD EPYC 7773X (1.3% behind). The margins are razor-thin, indicating that the i5-12400F delivers compute performance squarely in the mainstream-to-upper-midrange band, with no single rival establishing a meaningful gap. On the GPU side, the RTX 4080 SUPER holds the 88th percentile among all graphics cards, with an average benchmark score of 53,610. Its closest competitors in aggregate benchmarks are the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (0.2% ahead), AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (0.4% ahead), AMD Radeon RX 7700S (2.1% behind), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (2.9% behind). The delta between this GPU and its nearest rival is negligible, which means the 4080 SUPER’s advantage in Hard West comes not from a synthetic edge but from how its architecture handles the specific rendering workloads of this game. Given the combo’s top-8% rank, the data indicates that this pairing is significantly overqualified for Hard West’s demands, yet the measured frame rates reveal that the game still responds to both CPU and GPU headroom in distinct ways.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 SUPER brings 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock runs at 1438 MHz, with 23 Gbps effective throughput. These specifications are far beyond what a turn-based tactics title from 2015 would typically require, but Hard West’s measured results show that the GPU still becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions and quality presets. The GPU’s base clock is 2295 MHz with a boost clock of 2550 MHz, and it contains 10,240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output units. The Ada Lovelace architecture, built on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 45,900 million transistors, provides 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. In Hard West, the GPU’s role shifts dramatically depending on the resolution. At 1080p, the frame rates exceed 200 FPS on most presets, indicating that the game engine is not fully utilizing the GPU’s capabilities at that resolution. At 4K Ultra, however, the average FPS drops to 50.2, showing that the GPU’s rasterization and memory bandwidth are being taxed by the combination of high resolution and maximum settings. The RTX 4080 SUPER’s 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores are largely irrelevant for this game, as Hard West does not leverage ray tracing or DLSS in its rendering path. Instead, the GPU’s raw fill rate and memory bandwidth determine performance, and the data reflects this: the drop from 1080p High to 4K High is 71 FPS, a 65% reduction that aligns with the pixel count increase rather than any architectural bottleneck.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear and consistent scaling pattern across resolutions, with the CPU becoming less relevant as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 245.2 FPS, which drops to 204.1 FPS at 1440p Low (a 16.8% decrease) and then to 108.9 FPS at 4K Low (a 46.6% decrease from 1440p). This progression shows that at 1080p and 1440p, the i5-12400F is capable of feeding the RTX 4080 SUPER with enough frames to saturate most displays, and the GPU is not yet the primary constraint. Moving from 1080p Low to 1440p Low, the FPS drop is relatively modest, suggesting that the CPU still has headroom and the GPU is scaling efficiently with the added pixel load. However, the jump from 1440p Low to 4K Low is substantial, indicating that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth become the limiting factors at 4K. The same pattern holds at High settings: 203 FPS at 1080p, 129.7 FPS at 1440p, and 71 FPS at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p drop is 36.1%, while the 1440p-to-4K drop is 45.3%, reinforcing that the GPU bottleneck intensifies with resolution. At Ultra settings, the pattern is even more pronounced: 151.3 FPS at 1080p, 96.5 FPS at 1440p, and 50.2 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 36.2% and 48% respectively, showing that the highest preset amplifies the GPU’s workload disproportionately. This scaling behavior indicates that Hard West is primarily GPU-bound at 4K across all presets, while at 1080p and 1440p, the combo has enough CPU and GPU headroom to maintain high frame rates, with the CPU becoming a potential bottleneck only if the GPU were pushed to even higher frame rates.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its highest frame rates across all presets. Low settings produce an average of 245.2 FPS, Medium reaches 228 FPS, High achieves 203 FPS, and Ultra drops to 151.3 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 93.9 FPS, a 38.3% reduction, indicating that the Ultra preset imposes a significant additional load on the GPU even at the lowest resolution. The 1080p results are consistently above 150 FPS for every preset, which means that any modern 144Hz or even 240Hz display can be fully utilized, provided the game’s engine can maintain stable frame pacing. At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a clearer separation between presets. Low delivers 204.1 FPS, Medium 167.4 FPS, High 129.7 FPS, and Ultra 96.5 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 107.6 FPS, a 52.7% reduction, which is a larger percentage drop than at 1080p. This suggests that the GPU’s shading and memory bandwidth are increasingly stressed as resolution and preset quality both increase. The 1440p High result of 129.7 FPS is still above 120 FPS, making it suitable for high-refresh gaming, while Ultra at 96.5 FPS is close to but below the 100 FPS threshold. At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop significantly, and the preset scaling becomes the dominant factor. Low yields 108.9 FPS, Medium 91.7 FPS, High 71 FPS, and Ultra 50.2 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra is 58.7 FPS, a 53.9% reduction, which is the largest percentage drop across all resolutions. The 4K Low result is just above 60 FPS, while 4K High and Ultra fall below 72 FPS, with Ultra barely maintaining playability at 50.2 FPS. This data shows that the RTX 4080 SUPER can handle 4K in Hard West, but only at Low or Medium settings if the target is a consistent 60 FPS or higher.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal settings depend on the target resolution and refresh rate. For 1920x1080, the Ultra preset at 151.3 FPS is the best choice for users with high-refresh displays, as it provides a substantial visual quality increase over High (203 FPS) while still maintaining a frame rate well above 144 FPS. The 1080p Medium preset at 228 FPS is only necessary for 240Hz displays, where the extra 77 FPS over Ultra may justify the visual compromise, but for most users, Ultra offers the best balance. At 2560x1440, the High preset at 129.7 FPS is the recommended configuration. It delivers a 33.2 FPS improvement over Ultra (96.5 FPS) while retaining most of the visual fidelity, and it stays above the 120 FPS threshold that many 144Hz monitors use for smooth gameplay. The Medium preset at 167.4 FPS is only advantageous for users with 165Hz or 180Hz displays who prioritize frame rate over visual detail. For 3840x2160, the Low preset at 108.9 FPS is the only configuration that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS, making it the default recommendation for 4K gaming. The Medium preset at 91.7 FPS is a viable alternative for users with 90Hz or 100Hz displays, as it provides a modest visual upgrade over Low while remaining above 90 FPS. The High preset at 71 FPS is playable but may show frame pacing issues on 60Hz displays with variable refresh rate, and the Ultra preset at 50.2 FPS is only suitable for users who prioritize visual quality over smoothness and are willing to accept a sub-60 FPS experience. Across all resolutions, the data indicates that this combo is best utilized at 1080p Ultra or 1440p High, where the GPU’s capabilities are fully leveraged without hitting the CPU’s limits. At 4K, the user must make a deliberate trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate, with Low or Medium being the only presets that deliver a consistently smooth experience.