Hard West

# Hard West Performance Analysis: Intel Core i7-12700KF + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

Hard West, a turn-based tactics title from 2015, presents an intriguing benchmark scenario for this modern high-end pairing. The measured FPS data reveals a game that is surprisingly demanding at higher settings, despite its age and genre. With the Intel Core i7-12700KF driving the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, the results show a system that delivers playable frame rates across all tested configurations, but the scaling patterns expose where the bottlenecks lie. The data indicates this combo ranks 94th out of 3,722 tested combinations, placing it firmly in the top percentile of systems for this title. This analysis breaks down the measured performance across resolutions and settings, interpreting what the numbers reveal about CPU and GPU roles in this specific game.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is substantial, revealing how this game's rendering load scales with pixel count. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 234 FPS at 1920x1080 to 148 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 86 FPS, and then further to 78 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 66.7% performance drop from 1080p to 4K at High settings, indicating that the GPU is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases.

The scaling pattern at Low settings tells a similar story but with higher absolute numbers. At Low, the system achieves 282 FPS at 1080p, drops to 235 FPS at 1440p, and reaches 123 FPS at 4K. The relative drop from 1080p to 4K at Low is 56.4%, which is less severe than at High settings, suggesting that the GPU workload scales more steeply with resolution when visual fidelity increases.

Medium settings show the most balanced scaling curve. The measured range at 1080p Medium is 223-302 FPS with an average of 263, while 1440p Medium averages 192 FPS with a range of 163-221, and 4K Medium averages 101 FPS with a range of 86-116. The consistent frame time behavior across these resolutions suggests that Medium settings provide a more predictable performance envelope.

Ultra settings produce the steepest resolution scaling curve. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 175 FPS, which falls to 111 FPS at 1440p, and drops dramatically to 58 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result represents only 33.1% of the 1080p Ultra performance, highlighting that Ultra settings at 4K push the GPU to its limits in this title. This pattern indicates that Hard West's visual effects at Ultra settings create a significant pixel-shading burden that scales non-linearly with resolution.

The data suggests that at 1080p, the system is likely CPU-bound at lower settings, as evidenced by the relatively small FPS gains when dropping from High to Low (234 to 282 FPS). However, at 4K, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck, with performance dropping by over half compared to 1080p across all settings. The 123 FPS at 4K Low versus 282 FPS at 1080p Low shows a 56.4% reduction, which is a typical GPU-bound scaling pattern for a game with this rendering complexity.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-12700KF brings substantial processing power to this pairing, with 12 cores and 20 threads running at a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost clock of 5.00 GHz. The processor's benchmark results show strong multi-threaded performance, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 28,838 and a single-core score of 4,071. These figures place the CPU at the 85th percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 35,365.

In Hard West, the CPU's role appears to be significant at lower resolutions where the GPU has less work to do. The 1080p Low result of 282 FPS is the highest measured frame rate in the dataset, suggesting that the CPU can feed the RTX 5090 effectively at this resolution. The 3DMark scores support this, with the CPU achieving 9,983 in the max threads test and 9,282 in the 16-thread test, indicating robust parallel processing capability that turn-based tactics games can leverage for AI and pathfinding calculations.

The processor's nearest rivals in benchmark scores include the Intel Core i7-13700T with an average score of 35,403 (delta of -0.1%), the Intel Core i5-13600T at 35,305 (delta of 0.2%), and the Intel Core i7-12700K at 35,287 (delta of 0.2%). These comparisons show the i7-12700KF is essentially performance-equivalent to these alternatives, with differences of less than 1% in aggregate benchmarks menus.

At 1440p and 4K, the CPU's influence on frame rates diminishes as the GPU workload increases. The fact that 1080p High (234 FPS) is only 17% lower than 1080p Low (282 FPS) suggests that even at High settings, the CPU is keeping pace. However, the drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low (282 to 123 FPS) indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor when pixel count quadruples, regardless of the CPU's capability.

The CPU's L3 cache of 25 MB shared across all cores likely helps with the turn-based tactical gameplay, where map state and unit data need to be frequently accessed. The 20 threads provide ample parallelism for processing enemy AI turns and line-of-sight calculations, which are common computational tasks in this genre.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a formidable graphics card with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU's architecture is Blackwell 2.0, built on a 5 nm process with 92,200 million transistors. Its boost clock of 2407 MHz and base clock of 2017 MHz contribute to a FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS, which is substantial for any workload.

In Hard West, the GPU's role becomes increasingly dominant as resolution scales. The 4K Ultra result of 58 FPS is the lowest measured performance, indicating that the GPU is fully saturated at this configuration. The GPU's benchmark scores reflect its capability, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 18,355 and a Passmark G3D score of 39,650, placing it at the 92nd percentile against all GPUs.

The GPU's memory configuration is likely not a limiting factor in this game, given that Hard West is a 2015 title with modest texture requirements. Even at 4K Ultra, 32 GB of VRAM is far more than needed, suggesting that memory capacity is not the bottleneck. Instead, the GPU's compute throughput and shading rate are the primary constraints at higher resolutions.

The nearest rivals for the RTX 5090 in benchmark scores include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB with an average score of 79,605 (delta of 0.3%), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB at 79,396 (delta of 0.6%), and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT at 78,940 (delta of 1.1%). These comparisons highlight that while the RTX 5090 leads in raw benchmarks, the differences are small in aggregate scoring.

The GPU's 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs provide substantial pixel processing capability, which is reflected in the 4K performance. The 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate helps explain why the card can maintain 78 FPS at 4K High, a demanding configuration for a game that may have inefficient rendering paths due to its age.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Intel Core i7-12700KF and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 94th out of 3,722 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the top 2.5% of all systems tested for this game. This ranking reflects the strong performance demonstrated across all measured configurations, but also indicates that other combinations may achieve even higher frame rates in this specific title.

The rank of 94 with 3,722 total combos suggests that there are 93 other system configurations that perform better in Hard West. Given that the RTX 5090 is one of the most powerful GPUs available, this ranking implies that either more powerful CPUs are paired with this GPU for better 1080p performance, or that the game is particularly sensitive to certain CPU architectures.

The CPU's 85th percentile ranking against all CPUs and the GPU's 92nd percentile ranking against all GPUs indicate that this combo pairs two high-performing components. However, the in-game rank of 94 out of 3,722 (top 2.5%) is slightly lower than what the individual percentile rankings might suggest, indicating that Hard West's performance characteristics favor certain system configurations.

The benchmark data shows that this combo excels at 1080p, where it achieves over 175 FPS even at Ultra settings and 282 FPS at Low. At 4K, the performance drops to 58-123 FPS depending on settings, which is still playable but shows the GPU's limitations at extreme resolutions. The ranking suggests that for this game, higher CPU clock speeds or additional cores may provide marginal benefits at lower resolutions.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in Hard West?

A: The data shows 1440p provides the best balance, with 111-235 FPS across settings, compared to 58-123 FPS at 4K and 175-282 FPS at 1080p. The 1440p results offer high frame rates while maintaining better visual fidelity than 1080p.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance affect Hard West?

A: The i7-12700KF scores 4,071 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 1,043 in 3DMark single-thread. These results indicate strong single-thread capability that helps maintain high FPS at 1080p, where the CPU is more likely to be the limiting factor.

Q: Is 32 GB of VRAM necessary for this game?

A: The RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM is far more than Hard West requires, given the game's 2015 release. The memory capacity is not a bottleneck, as evidenced by the GPU's 92nd percentile ranking and the fact that performance scales with resolution rather than texture memory usage.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between High and Ultra at 4K?

A: At 4K, High settings average 78 FPS while Ultra averages 58 FPS, representing a 20 FPS (25.6%) reduction for the Ultra preset. This suggests Ultra settings impose a significant additional rendering cost.

Q: How does this combo compare to its nearest CPU rivals in game performance?

A: The CPU's nearest rivals include the i7-13700T (delta -0.1%), i5-13600T (delta 0.2%), and i7-12700K (delta 0.2%). These differences are minimal in aggregate benchmarks, suggesting similar in-game performance for Hard West.

Q: Does the game scale well with multi-threading?

A: The CPU's 3DMark max threads score of 9,983 versus 16-thread score of 9,282 shows only 7.5% improvement from additional threads, indicating that Hard West may not fully utilize all 20 threads, but the 12-core configuration still provides ample headroom.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. At 1080p, all settings deliver playable performance, with Ultra achieving 175 FPS and Low reaching 282 FPS. The High preset at 234 FPS provides a good balance between visual quality and performance for most displays.

For 1440p, High settings at 148 FPS offer excellent smoothness, while Medium at 192 FPS provides even higher frame rates with some visual compromise. Ultra at 111 FPS is still playable and provides the best image quality, but the 37 FPS drop from High to Ultra may not justify the visual improvement.

At 4K, High settings at 78 FPS is the recommended choice for a smooth experience, as it maintains playable frame rates while offering good visual fidelity. Medium at 101 FPS provides a higher performance margin, while Ultra at 58 FPS may cause noticeable stuttering on high refresh rate displays. Low at 123 FPS is the best option for competitive play, but sacrifices significant visual quality.

The Medium preset offers the most consistent frame time behavior across all resolutions, with measured ranges of 223-302 FPS at 1080p, 163-221 FPS at 1440p, and 86-116 FPS at 4K. This consistency makes Medium a reliable choice for users who prioritize stable frame pacing over maximum visual quality.

For users with 144Hz displays, 1440p High or 4K Medium provide the best experience, as both configurations maintain frame rates above the refresh threshold. For 60Hz displays, 4K High at 78 FPS offers the best visual quality without exceeding the display's refresh rate significantly.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data for this combo in Hard West is as follows:

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 282 FPS, which is the highest measured performance in the entire dataset. The Medium preset averages 263 FPS with a range of 223-302 FPS, showing consistent frame delivery. High settings average 234 FPS, while Ultra drops to 175 FPS. The 1080p results demonstrate that this system can easily handle the game at high refresh rates, with even Ultra settings exceeding 170 FPS.

At 2560x1440, performance remains strong but shows the expected resolution scaling impact. Low averages 235 FPS, Medium averages 192 FPS with a range of 163-221 FPS, High averages 148 FPS, and Ultra averages 111 FPS. The 1440p results indicate that this is the resolution where the GPU begins to show its workload, with a 52.8% drop from Low to Ultra.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear bottleneck. Low averages 123 FPS, Medium averages 101 FPS with a range of 86-116 FPS, High averages 78 FPS, and Ultra averages 58 FPS. The 4K results show that Ultra settings reduce performance to just under 60 FPS, which may not be ideal for all users, while Medium provides a comfortable 101 FPS average.

The data also reveals that the Medium preset has the only recorded minimum and maximum FPS values across all resolutions, suggesting that this setting provides the most stable frame delivery. At 1080p Medium, the 223-302 FPS range shows a 79 FPS spread, while 1440p Medium shows a 58 FPS spread, and 4K Medium shows a 30 FPS spread. This decreasing variability at higher resolutions indicates that the GPU's consistent workload helps stabilize frame times.

Overall, the measured FPS breakdown shows a system that delivers excellent performance across all tested configurations, with the only potential concern being 4K Ultra at 58 FPS. All other settings and resolution combinations exceed 75 FPS, making this combo highly capable for Hard West.