Hard West

# Hard West — Intel Core i7-12700K + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

This combination of an Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 produces a fascinating dataset for Hard West, a 2015 turn-based tactics title. The measured results show a system that is dramatically overqualified for the game's demands at lower resolutions, yet still encounters a significant performance ceiling at 4K Ultra. The data reveals a clear shift in bottleneck behavior as resolution and settings increase, moving from a heavily CPU-limited state at 1080p to a more GPU-bound scenario at 4K, though the game's age means neither component is ever truly stressed to its limits.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial but not uniform across settings. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 282.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 122.7 FPS at 3840x2160, representing a 56.6% reduction in performance. This steep decline indicates that even at Low settings, the GPU is beginning to feel the pressure of rendering four times the pixels, though the absolute numbers remain exceptionally high.

The scaling pattern changes with higher settings. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at High settings shows a drop from 239.9 FPS to 148.4 FPS, a 38.1% decrease. However, the jump from 1440p to 4K at High settings is more severe: 148.4 FPS down to 76.5 FPS, a 48.5% reduction. This accelerating decline suggests that the RTX 5090's raw compute power is being consumed by the pixel count increase, while the game's relatively simple geometry and effects do not scale in complexity the way modern titles would.

Ultra settings tell a similar story with lower absolute numbers. The 1080p Ultra result of 175.7 FPS drops to 111.3 FPS at 1440p (a 36.7% decrease), then falls to 60.8 FPS at 4K (a 45.4% further decrease). The fact that 4K Ultra still maintains above 60 FPS average is remarkable for a 2015 title, but the data shows that the game's engine has a hard ceiling around 280 FPS at 1080p Low, suggesting that the CPU or game logic becomes the limiting factor well before the GPU's potential is exhausted.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth, is vastly more than Hard West requires. The game's textures and scenes from 2015 would struggle to utilize even a fraction of this capacity, yet the memory subsystem's speed helps maintain consistent frame times at high resolutions where bandwidth demands increase.

The GPU's clock speeds of 2017 MHz base and 2407 MHz boost, combined with 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs, provide enormous fill rate capabilities (423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate). This explains why the card can push 122.7 FPS at 4K Low settings — the pixel throughput is simply overwhelming for this game's visual complexity. However, the benchmark results for the GPU show a percentile rank of 94 among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 84,306, placing it just 0.1% ahead of the RTX 5090 D and 0.2% ahead of the RTX 5050 Mobile in the nearest rivals list.

The GDDR7 memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) provides the bandwidth headroom that becomes critical at 4K. The data shows that the gap between 1440p and 4K performance narrows as settings increase from Low to Ultra, which suggests that memory bandwidth is not a bottleneck — instead, the compute load from higher settings compounds with the pixel count to create the observed scaling.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700K brings 12 cores and 20 threads with a boost clock of 5.00 GHz to this pairing. This Alder Lake-S processor, built on Intel's 10 nm process, has a 25 MB shared L3 cache and supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. Its benchmark scores are strong, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core result of 29,241 and a single-core score of 4,128, contributing to an average benchmark score of 35,684 and a percentile rank of 89 among all CPUs.

The CPU's role in Hard West becomes evident when examining the 1080p results. At Low settings, the system achieves 282.4 FPS, which is remarkably close to the 1080p Medium result of 266.8 FPS and the High result of 239.9 FPS. The relatively small differences between settings at 1080p — a range of only 42.5 FPS from Low to High — suggest that the game's logic and turn-based mechanics are creating a CPU-bound scenario, where the GPU's massive capabilities cannot be fully utilized because the processor is feeding frames as fast as the game engine allows.

The nearest rival comparisons for this CPU show it trading blows with similar-tier processors: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845 scores 35,802 (0.3% higher), while the Intel Core i7-13700T scores 35,468 (0.6% lower). These margins are negligible for gaming performance, indicating that the i7-12700K is well-matched to its competition in this workload.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its strongest performance across all settings. The Low preset achieves 282.4 FPS average, while Medium reaches 266.8 FPS. High settings produce 239.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 175.7 FPS. The step from High to Ultra costs 64.2 FPS, a 26.8% reduction, which is the largest single-setting penalty at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers remain high but show the expected scaling. Low settings deliver 238.5 FPS, Medium achieves 195.3 FPS, and High produces 148.4 FPS. Ultra at 1440p falls to 111.3 FPS, which is still comfortably above 100 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at this resolution is 127.2 FPS, reflecting the increased GPU workload from higher settings.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve steepens considerably. Low settings maintain 122.7 FPS, Medium drops to 102.8 FPS, and High falls to 76.5 FPS. Ultra at 4K is the most demanding configuration tested, yielding 60.8 FPS average. The spread from Low to Ultra at 4K is 61.9 FPS, showing that settings have a proportionally larger impact at this resolution than at 1080p, where the spread was 106.7 FPS.

FAQ

Q: Does this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K Ultra in Hard West?

A: Yes, the measured 4K Ultra average is 60.8 FPS, which just barely clears the 60 FPS threshold. This is the most demanding configuration in the dataset, and it holds above 60 FPS on average.

Q: Why is the 1080p Low result of 282.4 FPS so much higher than the 4K Ultra result of 60.8 FPS?

A: The scaling from 1080p Low to 4K Ultra involves both a fourfold increase in pixel count and substantially higher graphical settings. The data shows a 78.5% reduction in average FPS between these two extremes, which reflects both the GPU's increased workload at higher resolution and the additional computational cost of Ultra settings.

Q: Is the RTX 5090 being fully utilized at 1080p in this game?

A: The benchmark results suggest not. The relatively small performance differences between Low (282.4 FPS) and High (239.9 FPS) at 1080p indicate that the game's engine or CPU is limiting performance, as the GPU should be able to handle these settings with minimal impact at this resolution.

Q: How does this CPU compare to its nearest rivals in overall benchmark scores?

A: The i7-12700K has an average benchmark score of 35,684. Its closest competitor, the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5845, scores 35,802, which is 0.3% higher. The Intel Core i7-13700T scores 35,468, which is 0.6% lower, while the Intel Core i5-14500HX is 0.7% higher at 35,940.

Q: What is the largest single-setting performance penalty in the measured data?

A: At 1440p, moving from High (148.4 FPS) to Ultra (111.3 FPS) costs 37.1 FPS, a 25% reduction. At 4K, the same setting change drops from 76.5 FPS to 60.8 FPS, a 20.5% reduction, but the absolute difference of 15.7 FPS is smaller due to the lower starting point.

Q: Does the game show signs of being CPU-bound at any resolution?

A: Yes, at 1080p the performance difference between Low (282.4 FPS) and Medium (266.8 FPS) is only 15.6 FPS, and between Medium and High it's 26.9 FPS. These modest gaps, combined with the high absolute frame rates, suggest the game logic is limiting performance before the GPU's full capability is reached.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to High settings at 1440p as the sweet spot for this combination. The 148.4 FPS average at 2560x1440 High provides smooth, responsive gameplay for turn-based tactics, where frame rates above 144 FPS offer minimal practical benefit. The jump from High to Ultra at this resolution costs 37.1 FPS (from 148.4 to 111.3), which is a noticeable 25% reduction for visual improvements that would be difficult to perceive in a game with Hard West's art style.

For players prioritizing maximum frame rates, the 1080p Low preset at 282.4 FPS is the clear choice, though such high numbers are unnecessary for this genre. At 4K, High settings at 76.5 FPS offer the best balance, as Ultra drops to 60.8 FPS — still playable, but the 20.5% performance penalty is substantial. Medium at 4K provides 102.8 FPS, which might be preferable for those who want both high resolution and a larger frame rate buffer.

The data shows that Medium settings at any resolution provide excellent results: 266.8 FPS at 1080p, 195.3 FPS at 1440p, and 102.8 FPS at 4K. This preset appears to offer the most efficient scaling, with performance drops of 26.8% from 1080p to 1440p and 47.4% from 1440p to 4K, indicating a balanced workload between CPU and GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of Intel Core i7-12700K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 21st out of 1,699 tested combinations in Hard West. This placement in the top 1.2% of all combos reflects the system's ability to deliver exceptional performance across all measured configurations, though it is not the absolute top performer.

The rank of 21 suggests that while this hardware is extremely powerful, some combinations achieve higher frame rates in this specific game. Given that the RTX 5090 sits at the 94th percentile among GPUs and the i7-12700K at the 89th percentile among CPUs, one might expect a higher rank. However, the game's age and turn-based nature mean that extreme hardware combinations may not see proportional gains — the game engine's inherent limits appear to cap performance around the 280 FPS mark at 1080p.

The GPU's benchmark comparisons show it is essentially tied with its nearest rivals: 0.1% ahead of the RTX 5090 D and 0.2% ahead of the RTX 5050 Mobile, while the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 is 1.3% behind. These tiny margins in synthetic benchmarks translate to negligible differences in actual gameplay at the frame rates observed here. The combo's 21st place ranking, therefore, likely reflects the CPU's performance tier rather than the GPU's capabilities, as the processor's 89th percentile ranking and its nearest rival deltas of under 1% suggest that CPU choice has a more significant impact on this game's final frame rates than GPU selection.