Hard West

# Hard West with Intel Core Ultra 5 225 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

This combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 47th out of 2,949 tested combos in Hard West, placing it in the top 1.6% of all configurations. The pairing demonstrates exceptional headroom in this turn-based tactics title, with the RTX 5090's formidable compute resources and the Ultra 5 225's strong single-thread performance combining to deliver frame rates that far exceed display refresh capabilities at most settings. Hard West, released in late 2015, is not a demanding title by modern standards, and this hardware pairing produces results that are limited more by the game engine's frame pacing than by component capabilities.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 47 out of 2,949 tested combinations places this system in the 98.4th percentile of all tested configurations in Hard West. This is a remarkable position for a CPU that itself sits at the 85th percentile among all CPUs and a GPU at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs. The gap between the component percentiles and the combo rank suggests that Hard West's performance profile rewards the specific strengths of this pairing—particularly the RTX 5090's massive memory bandwidth and the Ultra 5 225's high boost clock.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 achieves an average benchmark score of 36,938, placing it within 0.2% of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (36,945) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (37,093). The nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-12900T, scores 37,112, a 0.5% difference. These sub-1% deltas indicate that the CPU is firmly in a performance tier where generational improvements are marginal in synthetic workloads. However, in Hard West specifically, the combination rank suggests the CPU's 4.90 GHz boost clock provides meaningful advantages in a game that relies heavily on single-threaded turn-based logic.

The RTX 5090's average benchmark score of 79,842 is particularly interesting when compared to its nearest rivals. The NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scores 79,605 (0.3% lower), while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X scores 80,959 (1.4% higher). The RTX 5090 sits between these two in synthetic benchmarks, yet in Hard West the combination rank demonstrates that the GPU's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth provide real-world advantages that synthetic averages may not fully capture. The GPU's 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms its elite status, but the combo's 98.4th percentile position in Hard West indicates that this particular game responds exceptionally well to the RTX 5090's architecture.

FAQ

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations in Hard West?

A: This combination ranks 47th out of 2,949 tested combos, placing it in the top 1.6% of all configurations tested in this game.

Q: What is the best frame rate achievable at 4K resolution with this setup?

A: At 3840x2160 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 123 FPS. With Medium settings, the average drops to 101 FPS, while High settings yield 78 FPS and Ultra settings produce 58 FPS.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance more in Hard West?

A: The data shows the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 175 (Ultra) to 312 (Low), indicating CPU or engine limits. At 4K, the spread narrows to 58-123 FPS, suggesting the GPU's rendering workload dominates.

Q: What is the highest average FPS recorded in the measured data?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 312 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next highest is 291 at 1080p Medium, followed by 235 at 1440p Low.

Q: How does the RTX 5090's 32 GB VRAM affect Hard West performance?

A: The 32 GB of GDDR7 memory with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth ensures that VRAM capacity is never a constraint in Hard West, even at 4K Ultra settings. The game's modest VRAM requirements are far exceeded, allowing the GPU to focus purely on rendering throughput.

Q: Is this combo overkill for Hard West given its 2015 release date?

A: In terms of raw performance, yes. The 1080p Ultra average of 175 FPS and 4K Ultra average of 58 FPS demonstrate that even the most demanding settings are playable, but the hardware's capabilities extend far beyond what this game can utilize.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a clear pattern of GPU scaling as resolution increases, with the CPU maintaining sufficient headroom to avoid becoming a bottleneck at any tested resolution. At 1080p, the average FPS across all settings ranges from 175 to 312, with the Low preset achieving nearly double the frame rate of Ultra. At 1440p, the range narrows to 111-235 FPS, and at 4K, it further narrows to 58-123 FPS.

The scaling from 1080p to 1440p shows a consistent reduction in average FPS across all settings. High settings drop from 234 to 148 FPS (a 36.8% reduction), Low from 312 to 235 FPS (24.7% reduction), Medium from 291 to 192 FPS (34.0% reduction), and Ultra from 175 to 111 FPS (36.6% reduction). These percentages indicate that the GPU is becoming the primary limiter as pixel count increases, with the 1440p results still showing substantial headroom.

The transition from 1440p to 4K shows even more pronounced GPU scaling. High settings drop from 148 to 78 FPS (47.3% reduction), Low from 235 to 123 FPS (47.7% reduction), Medium from 192 to 101 FPS (47.4% reduction), and Ultra from 111 to 58 FPS (47.7% reduction). The consistent ~47% reduction across all settings when moving to 4K strongly suggests that the GPU's rendering pipeline is the dominant constraint at this resolution, with the CPU contributing minimal additional overhead.

The fact that Low settings at 4K (123 FPS) achieve nearly the same frame rate as High settings at 1440p (148 FPS) indicates that the RTX 5090's compute resources are sufficiently robust to handle the increased pixel count without proportional performance degradation. The 4K Low result being only 16.9% lower than the 1440p High result, despite a 2.25x increase in pixel count, demonstrates the GPU's exceptional memory bandwidth and shading throughput.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured results show a clear progression across presets. Low settings produce an average of 312 FPS, Medium 291 FPS with a minimum of 247 and maximum of 335, High 234 FPS, and Ultra 175 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 247 FPS indicates that even during demanding scenes, the frame rate remains well above typical display refresh rates. The gap between Medium and High (57 FPS) is larger than the gap between High and Ultra (59 FPS), suggesting that the High preset introduces rendering features that have a disproportionate impact on frame time.

At 2560x1440, the pattern shifts slightly. Low settings achieve 235 FPS, Medium 192 FPS with a range of 163-221, High 148 FPS, and Ultra 111 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 163 FPS remains comfortably above 60 FPS, and even Ultra maintains an average above 100 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1440p shows a 52.8% reduction in average FPS, compared to a 43.9% reduction at 1080p, indicating that the GPU's workload is increasing more rapidly than the preset progression at higher resolutions.

At 3840x2160, the results demonstrate the GPU's capability at 4K. Low settings produce 123 FPS, Medium 101 FPS with a range of 86-116, High 78 FPS, and Ultra 58 FPS. The Medium preset's minimum of 86 FPS ensures smooth gameplay even in the most demanding moments, while Ultra's 58 FPS average approaches the threshold where frame pacing becomes noticeable. The 4K data shows a 52.8% reduction from Low to Ultra, identical to the 1440p percentage, suggesting that the preset scaling is consistent across resolutions for this GPU.

The Medium preset results at all three resolutions provide the most complete data, with minimum and maximum frame times recorded. At 1080p, the 247-335 FPS range shows a 35.6% variance between minimum and maximum. At 1440p, the 163-221 FPS range shows a 35.6% variance. At 4K, the 86-116 FPS range shows a 34.9% variance. This consistency in frame time variance across resolutions indicates that the game's frame pacing is stable regardless of resolution, with the RTX 5090 maintaining predictable performance characteristics.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance across all three resolutions. At 1080p, Medium achieves 291 FPS average with a minimum of 247 FPS, providing a 17.5% performance improvement over High while delivering substantially better visuals than Low. The 44 FPS gap between Medium and High at 1080p suggests that High's additional visual features come at a significant cost relative to their perceptual benefit in a turn-based tactics game.

At 1440p, Medium delivers 192 FPS average with a minimum of 163 FPS, which remains well above the 144 Hz refresh rate common on high-end monitors. The gap to High (148 FPS) is 44 FPS, while the gap from Medium to Low (235 FPS) is 43 FPS. This symmetrical scaling indicates that each preset tier represents a similar step in GPU workload, making Medium the optimal choice for users who want the highest visual quality while maintaining frame rates above 144 FPS.

At 4K, Medium produces 101 FPS average with a minimum of 86 FPS, which is the only preset at this resolution that maintains a minimum above 60 FPS while also keeping the average above 100 FPS. High drops to 78 FPS average, which is playable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes. Ultra's 58 FPS average is below the 60 FPS threshold that many users consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. Low's 123 FPS average is impressive but sacrifices too much visual quality for a turn-based game where frame rate beyond 100 FPS provides diminishing returns.

For users with high refresh rate displays at 1080p or 1440p, the High preset at 1440p (148 FPS) or 1080p (234 FPS) provides an excellent experience without the visual compromises of Medium. However, for a game like Hard West where tactical decision-making takes precedence over fast-twitch reactions, the Medium preset's combination of visual quality and performance headroom makes it the recommended choice. At 4K, Medium is the clear winner, offering a minimum FPS of 86 that ensures consistent smoothness.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 225 features 10 cores and 10 threads, with a base clock of 3.30 GHz and a boost clock of 4.90 GHz. This configuration, built on the Arrow Lake architecture with a 3 nm process node, provides strong single-threaded performance that is critical for turn-based tactics games like Hard West. The CPU's Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3,655 and multi-core score of 25,891 indicate a balanced profile, with the single-core result being particularly relevant for this game's AI and pathfinding calculations.

The CPU's 20 MB of shared L3 cache and 3 MB per-core L2 cache provide ample fast memory for the game's map data and unit states. The 102.4 GB/s memory bandwidth from dual-channel DDR5 support ensures that the CPU can feed the RTX 5090 without creating a bottleneck, even at 4K resolutions where draw calls and physics calculations can stress the processor. The Passmark single-thread score of 4,412 places the Ultra 5 225 in the upper echelon of desktop processors, with its 85th percentile ranking among all CPUs confirming its capability.

In Hard West specifically, the CPU's role is primarily in turn-based logic, unit movement calculations, and game state management. The 10-core, 10-thread configuration without hyper-threading means that each core handles a dedicated task, which can be beneficial for maintaining consistent frame times in games that scale well with physical cores. The 4.90 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded operations—such as the game's main loop and UI updates—execute with minimal latency.

The CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks are the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F (0% delta), AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D (-0.2%), AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 450 (-0.4%), and Intel Core i9-12900T (-0.5%). All four processors score within 0.5% of each other, indicating that the Ultra 5 225 is operating in a highly competitive performance band. However, the combo rank of 47 out of 2,949 in Hard West suggests that the CPU's specific combination of high boost clock and modern architecture provides an advantage in this particular game that synthetic benchmarks may not fully capture.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a flagship GPU with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's 21,760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output pipelines provide massive parallel compute capability, with FP32 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS. The 2,407 MHz boost clock and 1,750 MHz memory clock (28 Gbps effective) ensure that the GPU can sustain high frame rates even under demanding loads.

In Hard West, the GPU's role is primarily in rendering the game's stylized Western environments, character models, and visual effects. The game's 2015 release date means it does not utilize modern rendering techniques like ray tracing or DLSS, but the RTX 5090's raw rasterization performance ensures that even 4K Ultra settings are playable. The measured FPS data shows that the GPU scales predictably with resolution, with the 4K results demonstrating that the RTX 5090 can handle this game's demands without breaking a sweat.

The GPU's 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs and average benchmark score of 79,842 place it in elite territory. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (0.3% higher score), NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (0.6% higher), AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (1.1% higher), and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (1.4% lower). These sub-1.5% deltas indicate that the RTX 5090's synthetic benchmark performance is comparable to some data center and mobile workstation GPUs, though its gaming-specific features and drivers provide advantages in real-world titles like Hard West.

The 32 GB VRAM capacity is far more than Hard West requires, ensuring that texture streaming and draw calls never cause stuttering or pop-in. The 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth eliminates any potential memory bandwidth bottleneck, even at 4K with Ultra settings. The GPU's 575 W TDP and 950 W suggested PSU indicate substantial power requirements, but the performance delivered in Hard West—from 312 FPS at 1080p Low to 58 FPS at 4K Ultra—demonstrates that this power is translated into exceptional frame rates across all resolutions.