Hard West

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates for Hard West show an unusually steep drop as resolution climbs, which reveals a load distribution that is far from typical for this pairing. At 1080p with Low settings, the Intel Core i5-12400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combo delivers 247.9 FPS on average. Crank the resolution to 1440p at the same Low preset, and the average falls to 212.6 FPS — a decline of roughly 14% that suggests the CPU is still heavily involved. Moving further to 4K at Low, the average collapses to 123.9 FPS, which is a 50% reduction from the 1080p figure. That is an enormous penalty for a resolution jump, and it points to a rendering pipeline that is not scaling efficiently with pixel count.

The pattern becomes even more telling when examining the High preset. From 1080p High at 211.3 FPS, the drop to 1440p High is 147.1 FPS, a 30% decrease. At 4K High, the average sits at 76.5 FPS, which is a 64% reduction from 1080p. This is not the behavior of a system bottlenecked by the CPU at lower resolutions; instead, it indicates that the RTX 4090's immense compute resources are being underutilized because Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015, is not built to push that many pixels efficiently. The data suggests that the limiting component at 4K is the game's own rendering engine, not the hardware.

Ultra settings amplify this effect. At 1080p Ultra, the combo still manages 170.1 FPS, which is a strong result. At 1440p Ultra, that number falls to 108.7 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it drops to 58.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is stark: 123.9 FPS versus 58.4 FPS, meaning Ultra settings nearly halve the frame rate. This is a classic sign of a game that is heavily shader-bound, where the RTX 4090's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 compute cannot be fully leveraged due to the title's age and its simpler geometry and lighting models.

FAQ

Q: Why does the frame rate drop so much from 1080p to 4K with this high-end GPU?

A: The measured data shows a 50% reduction from 1080p Low to 4K Low (247.9 to 123.9 FPS) and a 64% reduction from 1080p High to 4K High (211.3 to 76.5 FPS). This disproportionate scaling indicates that Hard West's rendering engine, not the RTX 4090, becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, as the game's 2015-era pipeline cannot efficiently utilize the GPU's massive throughput.

Q: Is the Intel Core i5-12400F holding back the RTX 4090 in this game?

A: At 1080p, the CPU appears sufficient, as the combo still achieves 247.9 FPS at Low settings. However, the relatively small gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low (247.9 to 212.6 FPS) suggests some CPU involvement. The larger drops occur when moving to 4K, where the GPU's workload increases, but the game's parallelization limits become the primary constraint.

Q: What is the best settings preset for this combo at 4K?

A: Based on the measured FPS, High settings at 4K yields 76.5 FPS, which is playable. Ultra at 4K drops to 58.4 FPS, while Medium sits at 98.4 FPS and Low at 123.9 FPS. The data indicates that Medium offers the best balance of visual quality and frame rate, but High remains viable for smoother motion.

Q: How does the RTX 4090's performance in this game compare to its overall benchmark position?

A: The GPU holds a 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 66473. Yet in Hard West, the combo's rank is 61st out of 1699 tested combinations. This discrepancy shows that the game does not stress the GPU in the same manner as synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Steel Nomad, where the card scores 9223.

Q: Does the CPU's 6-core, 12-thread configuration matter for this game?

A: Given that the game is turn-based and not heavily multi-threaded, the i5-12400F's 6 cores and 12 threads are likely sufficient. The CPU's single-thread performance, measured at 2332 in Cinebench R23 single-core, is more relevant, and the data shows no obvious CPU bottleneck at 1080p where frame rates exceed 200 FPS.

Q: Should players expect consistent frame times at 4K Ultra?

A: The measured average of 58.4 FPS at 4K Ultra leaves little headroom for frame time spikes, which can be problematic in a tactics game where camera pans and effect-heavy turns occur. The 76.5 FPS at High provides more stability, while Medium at 98.4 FPS offers the safest margin.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-12400F brings 6 cores and 12 threads, built on Intel's Alder Lake architecture. Its base clock is 2.50 GHz with a boost up to 4.40 GHz. The CPU's benchmark results show a single-thread score of 2332 in Cinebench R23 and a multi-thread score of 16518 in the same test. These numbers place it in the 77th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 19221. In Hard West, the CPU's role is secondary to the GPU, but it still influences performance at lower resolutions.

At 1080p Low, the combo hits 247.9 FPS, which is high enough that any CPU limitation would manifest as a plateau across different resolutions. However, the data shows a clear drop from 1080p to 1440p at Low (247.9 to 212.6 FPS), indicating that the CPU is not entirely idle. The i5-12400F's 18 MB of shared L3 cache and 1.25 MB L2 per core help with the game's turn-based logic, but the title's AI and pathfinding calculations are not likely to scale beyond a few cores. The CPU's 3DMark 16-thread score of 5895 and max-thread score of 5912 show that it has headroom for multi-threaded workloads, but Hard West does not appear to exploit this.

The nearest rivals for this CPU in terms of average benchmark score are the Intel Core i7-8700K (19210, 0.1% delta), Intel Core i5-1335U (19167, 0.3% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 7533HS (19364, -0.7% delta), and AMD EPYC 7773X (18979, 1.3% delta). None of these comparisons suggest that the i5-12400F is underpowered for a 2015 tactics game. The bottleneck in Hard West is not the CPU's core count or clock speed; it is the game's own engine limits when paired with a GPU that is overkill for the title's demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the RTX 4090 and i5-12400F combo delivers consistently high frame rates across all settings. Low settings produce 247.9 FPS, Medium yields 228.4 FPS, High reaches 211.3 FPS, and Ultra drops to 170.1 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 77.8 FPS, which shows that the GPU is still the primary driver of performance at this resolution, but the CPU keeps pace without introducing a hard cap.

Moving to 1440p, the frame rates remain strong but show a more pronounced settings sensitivity. Low averages 212.6 FPS, Medium hits 190.8 FPS, High sits at 147.1 FPS, and Ultra falls to 108.7 FPS. The gap between Medium and High is substantial at 43.7 FPS, suggesting that High settings introduce effects that are disproportionately expensive on the GPU. At 1440p Ultra, the combo still manages over 100 FPS, which is more than adequate for a turn-based game.

At 4K, the performance landscape changes dramatically. Low averages 123.9 FPS, Medium drops to 98.4 FPS, High falls to 76.5 FPS, and Ultra is the only sub-60 result at 58.4 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 65.5 FPS, and the step from Medium to High is a 21.9 FPS loss. These numbers indicate that Hard West's shader complexity and fill-rate requirements do not scale linearly with resolution; the game's age means it lacks the optimization for 4K rendering that modern titles possess. For players targeting 4K, Medium settings at 98.4 FPS offer the best experience, while High at 76.5 FPS remains smooth enough for tactical gameplay.

How This Combo Ranks

In the database of tested hardware combinations for Hard West, the Intel Core i5-12400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a rank of 61 out of 1699 total combos. This places the pairing in the top 4% of all tested configurations, which is a strong result given the game's modest graphical demands. The rank is likely influenced more by the GPU's raw power than the CPU, as the RTX 4090 sits in the 91st percentile among all GPUs, while the i5-12400F is in the 77th percentile among all CPUs.

The combo's performance is not limited by either component in a conventional sense; rather, the game's engine caps the maximum achievable frame rate at 4K. At 1080p, the combo produces 247.9 FPS at Low, which is near the practical limit for many displays. At 4K Ultra, the 58.4 FPS average is still respectable, but it is far below what the RTX 4090 could deliver in a more modern title. The rank of 61 suggests that other combos with faster CPUs or more game-optimized GPUs can edge ahead, but the delta is likely small given the game's age.

When examining the GPU's nearest rivals by average benchmark score, the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (66733, -0.4% delta), NVIDIA Tesla P40 (66127, 0.5% delta), AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (67097, -0.9% delta), and NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (67320, -1.3% delta) are all within 1.3% of the RTX 4090's 66473 average. These workstation and data-center cards are not designed for gaming, but their scores highlight that the RTX 4090's synthetic benchmarks do not always translate to gaming superiority in older titles. In Hard West, the RTX 4090's dominance is blunted by the game's inability to utilize its 16,384 shading units and 512 TMUs effectively. The combo's rank of 61 reflects its raw power, but the data suggests that a less expensive GPU would deliver nearly identical results in this specific game.