Hard West

Settings Recommendations

For this combination of an Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 570 in Hard West, the data clearly indicates that Medium settings at 1920x1080 deliver the most balanced experience. The Medium preset produces an average of 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 71 FPS, which keeps the frame rate comfortably above typical playable thresholds while retaining visual quality. Dropping to Low at 1080p increases the average to 75 FPS, but the gain of 13 FPS comes at the cost of reduced visual fidelity, which may not be necessary given that Medium already maintains solid performance.

At 2560x1440, Medium remains the most viable preset, with an average of 39 FPS and a minimum of 33 FPS. This is playable for a turn-based tactics title, where reaction time is less critical than in fast-paced genres. The High preset at 1440p drops to 30 FPS, which is borderline, while Ultra falls to 23 FPS, making it less desirable. At 3840x2160, all presets fall below acceptable levels, with Medium delivering only 21 FPS and a minimum of 17 FPS, so 4K is not a practical option for this combo.

The data suggests that players prioritizing smoothness should select Medium at 1080p, as it provides a 31% improvement over High in average frame rate while maintaining a much tighter minimum frame rate. For those who prefer higher resolution, Medium at 1440p is the only preset that keeps average FPS above 35. The Ultra preset is consistently the worst-performing option across all resolutions, offering no scenario where it achieves a playable frame rate. High sits in a middle ground, working acceptably at 1080p with 47 FPS but struggling at higher resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this CPU and GPU in Hard West?

A: The measured data shows that 1920x1080 with Medium settings provides the best balance, yielding an average of 62 FPS with a minimum of 53 FPS. This is the only combination that delivers both high average performance and a comfortable minimum frame rate.

Q: Can this system handle 4K resolution in Hard West?

A: No. At 3840x2160, even the Low preset only achieves 25 FPS on average, while Medium drops to 21 FPS and Ultra falls to 12 FPS. None of the 4K presets reach the 30 FPS threshold typically considered playable.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to Medium in terms of performance?

A: Ultra is significantly slower across all resolutions. At 1080p, Ultra averages 36 FPS compared to 62 FPS on Medium, representing a 42% decrease. At 1440p, Ultra averages 23 FPS versus 39 FPS on Medium, and at 4K, Ultra averages 12 FPS versus 21 FPS on Medium.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and High settings at 1440p?

A: Low at 2560x1440 averages 48 FPS, while High averages 30 FPS. This is a 60% difference in average frame rate, making Low the only 1440p preset that exceeds 45 FPS.

Q: Is there a settings preset that provides consistent minimum frame rates?

A: The data shows that Medium is the only preset with recorded minimum frame rates at all resolutions. At 1080p, the minimum is 53 FPS; at 1440p, it is 33 FPS; at 4K, it is 17 FPS. This suggests Medium offers the most stable frame pacing.

Q: How does the GPU's benchmark standing relate to its in-game performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks in the 74th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 28766. Its closest rival, the AMD Radeon R9 M295X, is just 0.7% behind, while the RX 6800M is 0.4% ahead. These small deltas suggest the RX 570 is positioned within a tight performance cluster, which aligns with its mid-range in-game results.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling. At Medium settings, the average FPS drops from 62 at 1080p to 39 at 1440p, a 37% reduction, and then to 21 at 4K, another 46% reduction. This consistent degradation as pixel count increases indicates that the AMD Radeon RX 570 is the primary limiting component in this configuration.

Looking at Low settings, the scaling is even more pronounced. The average FPS at 1080p is 75, falling to 48 at 1440p (a 36% drop) and then to 25 at 4K (a 48% drop). The percentage losses are remarkably similar between Low and Medium presets, suggesting that resolution has a proportional impact regardless of settings. This pattern is typical of a GPU that is being pushed to its limits by sheer pixel throughput rather than by specific rendering features.

High settings show a slightly different curve: 47 FPS at 1080p, 30 FPS at 1440p (a 36% drop), and 16 FPS at 4K (a 47% drop). Ultra follows the same trend but at lower absolute values: 36 FPS at 1080p, 23 FPS at 1440p (a 36% drop), and 12 FPS at 4K (a 48% drop). The uniformity of these percentage drops across all settings is striking, indicating that the resolution scaling is independent of the graphics preset.

This behavior points to a fill-rate limitation. The RX 570 has a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s, which become bottlenecks as output resolution increases. The 4 GB GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is adequate for 1080p but strained at higher resolutions. The fact that even the Low preset cannot maintain 30 FPS at 4K reinforces that no amount of settings reduction can overcome the sheer pixel count at that resolution.

For turn-based tactics games, the data suggests that 1440p is the practical ceiling for this combo, and only with Medium settings. At 1080p, all presets except Ultra remain playable, but Medium offers the best combination of visual quality and frame rate stability. The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings is a 66% reduction, which is substantial and confirms that this GPU is not designed for high-resolution gaming.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i5-9400 and AMD Radeon RX 570 ranks 3552 out of 3722 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the bottom 5% of all configurations. This rank reflects the overall performance ceiling of this pairing in this specific title, which is notably low even for a turn-based tactics game that might be expected to be less demanding.

This low ranking is somewhat surprising given the individual component standings. The RX 570 sits in the 74th percentile among all GPUs, which is respectable, while the i5-9400 is in the 47th percentile among CPUs. However, the combination underperforms relative to these individual rankings, suggesting that either the game has unusual hardware requirements or that the pairing creates a specific bottleneck.

Comparing to the nearest rivals, the RX 570's average benchmark score of 28766 is just 0.4% below the AMD Radeon RX 6800M and 0.7% above the AMD Radeon R9 M295X. These tiny deltas mean that swapping in any of these GPUs would likely produce nearly identical in-game results. Similarly, the i5-9400's average benchmark score of 2254 is only 0.2% below the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 and 0.4% below the Intel Core i3-10305, indicating that CPU choices in this performance class have minimal impact.

The rank of 3552 out of 3722 means that 170 tested combos performed worse, but the overwhelming majority of systems delivered better results. This places the combo in the lower tail of the distribution, which is consistent with the measured FPS data showing that even at 1080p Low, the average is only 75 FPS. For a game from 2015, this suggests that Hard West is more demanding than its genre might imply, or that the test setup includes other bottlenecks.

The discrepancy between the GPU's high percentile (74th) and the combo's low rank (5th percentile) indicates that Hard West may be particularly sensitive to certain GPU features or that the RX 570's strengths do not align with this game's rendering requirements. The GPU's DirectX 12 support (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3 API compatibility should be sufficient, but the game's engine may favor other architectures.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 provides six cores and six threads, operating at a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz. This is a Coffee Lake architecture part on a 14 nm process, with 9 MB of shared L3 cache and 64 KB L1 plus 256 KB L2 per core. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration with 42.7 GB/s of bandwidth, and it ranks in the 47th percentile among all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 2254.

In the context of Hard West, a turn-based tactics game, the CPU's role is typically less demanding than in real-time strategy or action titles. Turn-based games often have simpler AI and game logic, but they can still be sensitive to single-thread performance for game logic and pathfinding. The i5-9400's single-core scores are modest: 94 in Cinebench R15, 392 in Cinebench R20, and 935 in Cinebench R23. These scores place it in the mid-range, which should be sufficient for turn-based gameplay.

The 6-core, 6-thread configuration without Hyper-Threading means that the CPU relies on its physical cores for multithreaded workloads. The multi-core scores are 668 in Cinebench R15, 2784 in Cinebench R20, and 6629 in Cinebench R23. These are adequate for general multitasking but not exceptional. For a game like Hard West, the CPU is unlikely to be the primary bottleneck unless the game engine is heavily optimized for single-threaded performance.

The measured FPS data shows consistent frame rate drops with increasing resolution, which is the signature of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the limiting factor, we would expect to see similar FPS across different resolutions, as the CPU workload would remain constant while the GPU workload changes. The fact that FPS drops by approximately 36-48% at each resolution step indicates that the GPU is the limiting component.

However, the CPU's performance class matters for ensuring that it does not bottleneck the GPU even at lower resolutions. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 75 FPS, which is a reasonable frame rate that suggests the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at this resolution. The 47th percentile ranking means that about half of all CPUs are faster, but for this game, the i5-9400 appears sufficient when paired with the RX 570.

The nearest CPU rivals show very tight performance deltas: the i7-1068NG7 is 0.2% faster, the i7-10710U is 0.3% slower, the Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 is 0.4% slower, and the i3-10305 is 0.4% faster. These sub-1% differences mean that CPU choice in this performance class has virtually no impact on in-game results. The bottleneck analysis is therefore straightforward: the RX 570 is the limiting factor, and upgrading the CPU alone would yield no measurable improvement in Hard West.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a clear progression across settings. The Low preset delivers an average of 75 FPS, which is the highest measured for this combo. Medium reduces the average to 62 FPS, with a minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 71 FPS, providing a more stable experience. High drops further to 47 FPS, and Ultra falls to 36 FPS. The difference between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 39 FPS, a 52% reduction, indicating that Ultra settings impose a significant rendering cost that this GPU cannot sustain for smooth gameplay.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops across all settings. Low averages 48 FPS, which is still playable, while Medium averages 39 FPS with a minimum of 33 FPS and a maximum of 45 FPS. High averages 30 FPS, which is borderline, and Ultra averages 23 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 25 FPS, representing a 52% reduction, consistent with the 1080p trend. The Medium preset's minimum of 33 FPS is the only 1440p option that stays above 30 FPS.

At 3840x2160, none of the presets achieve playable frame rates. Low averages 25 FPS, Medium averages 21 FPS with a minimum of 17 FPS and a maximum of 24 FPS, High averages 16 FPS, and Ultra averages 12 FPS. The Medium preset is the only 4K option with recorded minimum and maximum values, indicating that it was the most consistently measured preset even though its performance is inadequate. The difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is 13 FPS, a 52% reduction that mirrors the pattern seen at other resolutions.

The data reveals that the relative performance gap between Low and Ultra remains constant at approximately 52% across all resolutions. This suggests that the Ultra preset adds a consistent percentage of rendering overhead regardless of resolution. The absolute FPS values, however, scale with pixel count, confirming that the GPU's fill rate is the determining factor. The RX 570's 32 ROPs and 2048 shading units provide a certain throughput, but this is insufficient for high-resolution Ultra settings.

The measured FPS values also show that the Medium preset is the only one with complete min/max data at all resolutions. This suggests that Medium was the most thoroughly tested preset, likely because it represents the default or recommended setting. The min FPS values are consistently about 15-19% below the average, while max FPS values are about 14-15% above the average, indicating reasonable frame pacing without extreme spikes or drops. This stability makes Medium the most reliable choice for this hardware combination.