Hard West

The Intel Core i7-13700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivers a decidedly lopsided performance profile in Hard West, a 2015 turn-based tactics title. The data indicates that the system is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet the sheer speed of the RTX 4090 ensures that even the most demanding settings remain playable. At 1080p and 1440p, the frame rates soar into triple digits, revealing that the CPU’s substantial multi-core resources are more than sufficient to feed the graphics card. This combination ranks 20th out of 1,699 tested combos, placing it in the top 1.2% of all configurations, a position that reflects the high-end nature of both components rather than any specific optimization for this older title.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and clearly indicates where the bottleneck lies. At 1080p with High settings, the system produces 228.9 FPS, which falls to 147.1 FPS at 1440p, and further to 73.9 FPS at 4K. This represents a 67.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K, showing that the GPU is the limiting factor as pixel count increases. The pattern is consistent across all settings: Low settings at 1080p yield 308.3 FPS, dropping to 232.8 FPS at 1440p and 123.7 FPS at 4K. The scaling is not perfectly linear; the 4K results are disproportionately lower, which points to the memory bandwidth and raw fillrate of the RTX 4090 being taxed heavily at 3840x2160.

The Ultra preset amplifies this effect. At 1080p Ultra, the system hits 171.4 FPS, but at 4K Ultra, it falls to 56.7 FPS. This 66.9% drop mirrors the High preset’s scaling, suggesting that the additional graphical effects in Ultra do not change the fundamental balance of the workload. The data implies that Hard West’s rendering engine, being from 2015, is not well-equipped to utilize the RTX 4090’s parallel processing capabilities at lower resolutions, where the CPU and driver overhead become more prominent. However, as resolution climbs, the GPU’s compute units, shading units, and texture units are fully engaged, leading to the pronounced FPS decline.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a monolithic powerhouse, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with 16,384 shading units and 512 texture mapping units. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is crucial for handling the high-resolution textures and effects that Hard West can present at 4K. The GPU’s boost clock of 2520 MHz, with a base of 2235 MHz, ensures that it can sustain high throughput during intense scenes. The benchmark results show that the RTX 4090 sits in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66,473.

In this game, the GPU’s role is dominant, especially at 4K. The measured FPS at 4K Ultra (56.7 FPS) and 4K High (73.9 FPS) suggests that the card is operating near its limits for this title, likely due to the game’s older DirectX 11-era rendering pipeline not scaling efficiently with the GPU’s newer architecture. The passmark DirectX 11 score of 326 is notably lower than the DirectX 10 score of 224, indicating that the driver overhead for this game’s API is not a strong suit. Conversely, at 1080p Low, the RTX 4090 achieves 308.3 FPS, which is likely constrained by the CPU or the game’s frame rate cap, as the GPU’s raw compute (82.58 TFLOPS FP32) is far from being saturated.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-13700K provides a robust foundation with 16 cores and 24 threads, running at a base clock of 3.40 GHz and a boost of 5.40 GHz. This Raptor Lake architecture, fabricated on Intel’s 10 nm process, offers strong single-thread performance, as evidenced by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 5,505 and its 3DMark single-thread score of 1,136. The CPU’s multi-threaded capabilities are equally impressive, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 39,000 and a 3DMark max-thread score of 12,412. The processor’s 30 MB of shared L3 cache and 2 MB per-core L2 cache help reduce latency in game logic and AI computations.

In Hard West, where turn-based tactics rely heavily on CPU-driven simulation of unit actions and pathfinding, the i7-13700K’s high single-thread performance is beneficial. However, the benchmark data shows that the CPU is rarely the bottleneck. At 1080p Low, the system hits 308.3 FPS, which is near the practical limits of many displays and likely close to the game engine’s frame rate ceiling. The CPU’s percentile ranking against all CPUs is 93, and its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-13700KF, has a delta of -0.1%, showing that the non-K variant performs essentially identically. This means that the CPU is not holding back the RTX 4090 in lower-resolution scenarios, and the frame rate differences across settings are primarily driven by the GPU’s workload.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the i7-13700K and RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 20 out of 1,699 tested combinations, placing it in the top percentile of all systems tested. This rank confirms the raw power of both components, yet it does not necessarily reflect optimal pairing for this specific title. The data shows that the system is overkill for Hard West at 1080p, where it produces over 300 FPS on Low settings, but it still delivers a playable experience at 4K Ultra, which is more than can be said for most other configurations.

Looking at the individual component rankings, the GPU’s percentile (91) is slightly lower than the CPU’s (93), but both are in the high-performance tier. The GPU’s nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA Tesla T4 with a delta of -0.4%, are not consumer gaming cards, indicating that the RTX 4090’s closest competitors are professional-grade compute accelerators. This suggests that the RTX 4090 is in a class of its own for gaming, and the combo rank of 20 is likely limited by the CPU’s performance in other titles, not by this specific game’s demands. The CPU’s nearest rivals include the AMD EPYC 4364P (delta 0.3%) and the Intel Core i9-12900F (delta 0.4%), which are close in average benchmark scores but may differ in gaming-specific workloads.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of the system’s performance across all resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the system achieves its highest frame rates, with Low settings producing 308.3 FPS, Medium at 287.6 FPS, High at 228.9 FPS, and Ultra at 171.4 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is relatively small (20.7 FPS), but the jump from Medium to High is more pronounced (58.7 FPS), indicating that High settings introduce significant visual effects that impact GPU load. Ultra further reduces performance by 57.5 FPS compared to High, showing that the highest preset is particularly demanding.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates remain high but show a clear downward trend. Low settings yield 232.8 FPS, Medium at 186.5 FPS, High at 147.1 FPS, and Ultra at 106.5 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at High settings results in a 35.7% drop, which is expected as the pixel count increases by 77%. The 4K results at 3840x2160 are where the RTX 4090’s limits become apparent. Low settings still manage 123.7 FPS, Medium at 101.9 FPS, High at 73.9 FPS, and Ultra at 56.7 FPS. The drop from 1440p to 4K at High settings is 49.8%, which is steeper than the 1080p to 1440p drop, confirming that the GPU is the primary constraint at this resolution.

The data also shows that the game is not well-optimized for high-end hardware, as the frame rate differences between settings are not always proportional to the visual quality improvements. For instance, at 4K, the difference between Low and Medium is 21.8 FPS, but the difference between High and Ultra is only 17.2 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset may introduce diminishing returns in visual fidelity while still taxing the GPU heavily. Overall, the system is capable of delivering smooth gameplay at 4K High, but players seeking 60+ FPS at 4K Ultra will need to accept the 56.7 FPS average, which is still playable for a turn-based tactics title where frame pacing is less critical than in fast-paced shooters.