Hard West

Hard West is a turn-based tactics title from 2015 that, on modern flagship hardware, turns into a study in frame rate headroom. The pairing of the Intel Core i7-14700KF with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 produces a wide spread of performance across resolutions and settings, with the data showing a system that is almost never the bottleneck. The measured FPS figures reveal a game that scales predictably with resolution but reacts strongly to preset changes, making the choice of settings more impactful than the choice of CPU or GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K shows a classic pattern of increasing GPU load, but the absolute numbers remain high enough that the game never feels demanding. At 1080p with High settings, the combo produces 230.9 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops that to 142.3 FPS, and at 4K it settles at 76 FPS. This represents a 67% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K, which is a substantial hit, but the floor is still well above the refresh rate of most displays.

The scaling across settings at each resolution tells a more interesting story. At 4K, the difference between Low and Ultra presets is stark: 122.1 FPS at Low versus 58.6 FPS at Ultra. That is a 52% performance penalty for maxing out the visual quality. The gap between Medium (98.3 FPS) and High (76 FPS) is similarly large, suggesting that Hard West's Ultra preset includes effects that are disproportionately expensive. At 1440p, the same pattern holds: Low produces 232.2 FPS, Medium 186.5 FPS, High 142.3 FPS, and Ultra 110.3 FPS.

The data indicates that at 1080p, the CPU is likely the limiting factor, as the frame rates exceed 300 FPS on Low settings (317.5 FPS) and remain above 290 FPS on Medium (294.8 FPS). These numbers are so high that the GPU is being fed as fast as the processor can manage. At 4K, the GPU becomes the clear constraint, with even the Low preset only reaching 122.1 FPS. For a turn-based tactics game, this means players with high-refresh monitors can easily hit 144 FPS at 1440p with High settings, but chasing Ultra at 4K will cap them at 58.6 FPS.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i7-14700KF is a 20-core, 28-thread processor based on the Raptor Lake architecture, running on the Intel Socket 1700 platform. Its benchmark scores place it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, with a multi-core score of 44,557 in Cinebench R23 and a single-core score of 6,290 in the same test. These numbers are strong, but for Hard West, the single-threaded performance matters more than the raw core count.

The game is from 2015, a time when turn-based tactics rarely used more than a few threads. The CPU's 20 cores and 28 threads are largely idle during gameplay, but the high single-core performance ensures that the game's logic and AI calculations are processed without becoming a bottleneck. The nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks—the Intel Core i7-14700K (0% delta), AMD EPYC 9115 (0.3% faster), AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (0.4% slower), and Intel Xeon Platinum 8270 (1.3% slower)—confirm that this CPU is at the top of the pack, but such differences are irrelevant in a game that only uses a fraction of the available resources.

The measured FPS at 1080p Low (317.5 FPS) and Medium (294.8 FPS) suggests the CPU can push frame rates well beyond what the GPU can render at higher resolutions. This is a case where the processor's headroom is effectively wasted in Hard West, as the game's simple graphics and turn-based nature mean that even a mid-range modern CPU would likely produce similar results. The 3.40 GHz base clock and 5.60 GHz boost clock provide the necessary responsiveness for quick turn transitions, but the data shows no CPU-related stutter or frame drops, even at the highest frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the defining component in this pairing, featuring 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus with 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. Its Ada Lovelace architecture includes 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output units, with a boost clock of 2520 MHz. The GPU's 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with a Passmark G3D score of 38,194, puts it in the top tier, but its nearest rivals in the database—the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (-0.4%), Tesla P40 (0.5%), AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (-0.9%), and Quadro P6000 (-1.3%)—are professional workstation cards, not gaming-focused products.

In Hard West, the RTX 4090's massive VRAM allocation is entirely unnecessary, as the game's textures from 2015 will not approach even 8 GB, let alone 24 GB. The GPU's raw compute power, however, drives the frame rates across all resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the 58.6 FPS result represents the GPU being fully utilized, while at 1080p Low, the 317.5 FPS figure shows the GPU is barely breaking a sweat. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are far beyond what a game like Hard West requires, but they ensure that the only limitation is the game's own engine.

The GPU's performance scaling from Low to Ultra at each resolution is consistent: roughly a 50-60% drop in FPS from the lowest to the highest preset. This suggests that the game's Ultra settings include heavy post-processing or shadow effects that tax even the RTX 4090. The 4K Ultra result of 58.6 FPS is the only point where the combo dips below 60 FPS, indicating that for this game, the GPU is overkill for most scenarios, but still not quite enough for the most demanding preset at the highest resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 1,699 tested combinations in the database, the Intel Core i7-14700KF paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ranks 17th overall in Hard West. This top 1% placement is expected given the hardware, but it's notable that there are 16 combos that score higher. The data does not specify what those combos consist of, but given that this is already a flagship CPU and GPU pairing, the higher-ranking systems likely use slight overclocks or different memory configurations.

The rank of 17 out of 1,699 means this combo outperforms 99% of all tested systems in this game. However, the actual frame rate differences between the top 20 combos are likely minimal, as the game's performance ceiling is limited by its single-threaded engine. The combo's rank relative to others is more a reflection of the hardware's overall strength than any optimization for Hard West specifically. In practical terms, this ranking means the system will not be the limiting factor in any scenario, and the user will see performance that is at the very top of what the game can deliver.

The delta percentages from the CPU's nearest rivals (all within 1.3%) and the GPU's nearest rivals (all within 1.3%) show that this combo is at a performance plateau. There is no meaningful headroom to gain by switching to a different high-end CPU or GPU, as the game simply cannot use the resources available. The 17th rank is a statistical result of marginal differences in synthetic benchmarks, not a reflection of visible performance differences in gameplay.

FAQ

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: The measured average FPS is 142.3, which is comfortably above 144 Hz for high-refresh monitors, though not quite enough for a locked 144 FPS in all scenes.

Q: Is this combo overkill for Hard West?

A: The data indicates yes—at 1080p Low, the combo produces 317.5 FPS, and even at 4K High it maintains 76 FPS, both far beyond what the game's turn-based gameplay requires.

Q: Why is the 4K Ultra preset so much slower than High?

A: The Ultra preset at 3840x2160 yields 58.6 FPS, which is 23% lower than High's 76 FPS, suggesting the Ultra settings enable effects that disproportionately impact the GPU.

Q: Does the CPU matter for this game?

A: The 20-core processor is largely underutilized, but its strong single-core performance (6,290 in Cinebench R23) ensures the game logic never bottlenecks, as evidenced by 317.5 FPS at 1080p Low.

Q: How does this combo compare to other systems?

A: It ranks 17th out of 1,699 tested combos, placing it in the top 1% of all configurations in the database for Hard West.

Q: What is the lowest frame rate recorded in the data?

A: The lowest average FPS is 58.6 at 4K with Ultra settings, which is still playable but dips below 60 FPS, the only such case across all tested resolutions and presets.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 317.5 FPS average
• Medium: 294.8 FPS average
• High: 230.9 FPS average
• Ultra: 168.4 FPS average

At 1080p, the frame rates are extremely high across all presets. The difference between Low and Ultra is 149.1 FPS, a 47% reduction, but even the lowest result (Ultra at 168.4 FPS) exceeds the refresh rate of most monitors. These numbers suggest the CPU is the primary limiter at this resolution, as the GPU has ample headroom.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 232.2 FPS average
• Medium: 186.5 FPS average
• High: 142.3 FPS average
• Ultra: 110.3 FPS average

The 1440p results show a more balanced load between CPU and GPU. The Low preset still produces 232.2 FPS, but the Ultra preset drops to 110.3 FPS, which is a 52% reduction. This resolution is the sweet spot for high-refresh gaming, with High settings delivering 142.3 FPS, just shy of a 144 Hz display's maximum.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 122.1 FPS average
• Medium: 98.3 FPS average
• High: 76 FPS average
• Ultra: 58.6 FPS average

At 4K, the GPU becomes the definitive bottleneck. The Low preset manages 122.1 FPS, but the Ultra preset drops to 58.6 FPS, the only sub-60 FPS result in the entire dataset. The scaling from Low to Ultra is a 52% performance hit, consistent with the 1440p pattern. For a turn-based game, 58.6 FPS is still perfectly playable, but players seeking smoothness should stick to High settings at this resolution.