Hard West

Hard West is a turn-based tactics title from 2015 that remains surprisingly demanding at higher settings, and the measured results for the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 show a wide performance spread depending on how you configure it. The data reveals a system that can easily handle the game at high refresh rates on standard monitors but will struggle to maintain playable frame rates at 4K with maximum quality. Benchmark results indicate that the most balanced experience is found at 1440p with High settings, where the average frame rate sits comfortably above 60 FPS, while the gap between Low and Ultra presets is massive, suggesting a significant performance headroom for those who prefer visual fidelity over sheer speed.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows provide a clear hierarchy for the optimal experience in Hard West. At 1920x1080, every preset is playable, but the difference between Low and Ultra is substantial, with the average frame rate dropping from 246 FPS on Low to 116 FPS on Ultra. The High preset at 1080p yields an average of 155 FPS, which is an excellent balance for a fast-paced tactical game, ensuring smooth camera panning and unit animations without sacrificing too much visual detail. For users with 1440p monitors, the High preset is the clear recommendation, delivering an average of 98 FPS. This is a significant drop from the 155 FPS seen at 1080p, but it remains well above the threshold for a fluid experience. The Medium preset at 1440p offers a higher average of 127 FPS with recorded minimums of 108 FPS, making it the best choice for competitive play or for those who prioritize frame rate consistency above all else. At 4K, the situation changes dramatically. The High preset averages only 51 FPS, which is borderline for a turn-based game but may feel sluggish during transitions. The Medium preset at 4K is the only viable option for a smooth experience, with an average of 67 FPS and a minimum of 57 FPS, suggesting that players should avoid Ultra entirely at this resolution, as it drops to an average of 38 FPS. The data strongly suggests that the High preset at 1440p is the sweet spot for this combination, offering a high frame rate with enough visual overhead to appreciate the game's dark, stylized environments.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is the primary driver of frame rate in Hard West, as evidenced by the steep performance penalties as resolution increases. The GPU's 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus provides a bandwidth of 760.3 GB/s, which is more than sufficient for a 2015 title, even at 4K. The card's architecture, Ampere, with a boost clock of 1710 MHz, allows it to push high frame rates at lower resolutions, but the data shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at 4K. At 3840x2160, the average frame rate drops by roughly half compared to 1440p for the same settings, which is a classic sign of GPU-bound rendering. For instance, the High preset averages 98 FPS at 1440p but only 51 FPS at 4K, a 48% reduction. This indicates that the RTX 3080, while powerful, is not fully capable of sustaining high frame rates at 4K in this game with the most demanding settings. The card's benchmark scores, such as a Passmark G3D score of 25086 and a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4407, place it in the 68th percentile of all GPUs, showing it is a mid-to-high-tier performer. Its nearest rivals in the benchmark database include the NVIDIA P106-100 and AMD Radeon RX 6600M, which have nearly identical average scores, with deltaPct values of -0.3 and -0.4 respectively, indicating that the RTX 3080 is closely matched with those parts in synthetic tests. However, in this specific game, the GPU's raw compute power, rated at 29.77 TFLOPS for FP32, is what allows it to handle the 4K Medium preset at an average of 67 FPS, while the Ultra preset, which likely increases draw calls and shadow complexity, overwhelms it. The 8 nm process node and 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die give the card a high fill rate, but the data confirms that Hard West's Ultra settings are simply too heavy for this GPU to manage at 4K. The GPU's memory clock of 1188 MHz with 19 Gbps effective speed is not a bottleneck at lower resolutions, but the 10 GB capacity is adequate for this game's textures, as the frame rate drops are more attributable to shading and pixel throughput than memory capacity.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 5 245 plays a supporting role in Hard West, as the game is not heavily threaded, but its high single-core performance ensures that the GPU is not starved of data. The CPU has 14 cores and 14 threads, with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, which is excellent for a game from 2015 that typically relies on a few fast cores. The benchmark data shows a strong single-threaded score of 4648 in Cinebench R23, which is critical for maintaining high frame rates in turn-based tactics where game logic and AI calculations are often serial. The CPU's architecture, Arrow Lake, built on a 3 nm process by TSMC, includes 24 MB of shared L3 cache, which helps reduce memory latency and improves responsiveness. In the measured FPS data, the CPU does not appear to be a bottleneck, as the frame rates scale consistently with resolution, indicating the GPU is the limiting factor. For example, at 1080p Low, the average frame rate is 246 FPS, which is likely near the engine's ceiling, but the CPU's ability to maintain that level shows it has ample headroom. The CPU's Passmark single-thread score of 4394 and multithread score of 38706 place it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs, making it a high-end part. Its nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 7900 and Intel Core i5-14600K, have average scores within 0.5% and 0.8% respectively, showing that the Ultra 5 245 is competitive with much more expensive processors. The CPU's memory bandwidth of 102.4 GB/s over a dual-channel DDR5 interface is sufficient for this game, and the 65 W TDP suggests that thermal throttling is unlikely to be an issue in a standard desktop chassis. The data indicates that the CPU is never the constraint in Hard West; even at 1080p with Low settings, the frame rate of 246 FPS is more than double what most displays can refresh, and the CPU's fast boost clock ensures that frame pacing remains consistent. The Core Ultra 5 245's performance in Passmark physics (2569) and floating-point math (120548) further support its capability to handle the game's deterministic simulation without slowdowns, even during complex turn sequences.

How This Combo Ranks

In the specific context of Hard West, the combination of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 ranks 764th out of 2949 tested combos, placing it in the top 26% of all systems tested. This is a respectable position, but it is not near the top, which suggests that while this pairing is capable, there are many other combinations that deliver higher frame rates in this game. The rank is likely held back by the GPU's performance at 4K, where the RTX 3080 struggles with the Ultra preset, and by the fact that many competitors may use newer, faster graphics cards. In the broader context of the benchmark database, the CPU and GPU individually rank well, with the CPU in the 90th percentile and the GPU in the 68th percentile, but their combined performance in this title is moderate. The combo's rank of 764 indicates that it is not a top-tier setup for Hard West, but it is far from a weak one. The data shows that the system can achieve high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p, which would place it above the median for most users, but the 4K Ultra performance, at an average of 38 FPS, is below what many would consider acceptable, dragging the overall ranking down. The ranking also reflects the fact that the RTX 3080, while powerful, is not the fastest GPU available, and its nearest rivals in the database, such as the AMD Radeon R9 M290X, have similar average scores, indicating that the GPU's performance is not exceptional. For a user with a 1440p monitor, this combo would feel very strong, but for 4K enthusiasts, the rank is a warning that compromises are necessary. The overall percentile position suggests that this is a balanced mid-to-high-end system that excels at standard resolutions but is not optimized for the most demanding settings at 4K.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling from 1080p to 4K is steep, and it reveals that the GPU is the primary limiting component in this configuration. When moving from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440, the average frame rate for the High preset drops from 155 FPS to 98 FPS, a reduction of about 37%. This is a significant drop, but it is expected as the pixel count increases by 78%. However, when moving from 1440p to 4K (3840x2160), the High preset average drops from 98 FPS to 51 FPS, a reduction of 48%, which is disproportionately large. This indicates that the RTX 3080 is being pushed to its limits at 4K, and the memory bandwidth or fill rate is becoming a bottleneck. The Low preset shows a similar trend, with 246 FPS at 1080p, 155 FPS at 1440p, and 82 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 47%, again indicating a GPU-bound scenario. The Medium preset, which has recorded minimums and maximums, shows an average of 201 FPS at 1080p, 127 FPS at 1440p, and 67 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1440p to 4K is 47%, consistent with the other presets. The Ultra preset is the most telling, with 116 FPS at 1080p, 73 FPS at 1440p, and 38 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1440p to 4K is 48%, but the absolute frame rate at 4K is below playable levels. This data strongly suggests that the CPU is not a bottleneck, as the frame rates scale consistently with resolution, which is a classic indicator of GPU limitation. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar frame rates at all resolutions for a given preset, which is not the case. The fact that the frame rate halves from 1440p to 4K across all settings confirms that the RTX 3080 is the limiting component, and its 10 GB of VRAM, while not a capacity issue, is paired with a 320-bit bus that provides 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is insufficient to keep up with the pixel throughput demanded at 4K. The data also shows that the scaling is not linear, with the 4K drop being more severe than the 1440p drop, suggesting that the GPU's shading units (8704) and ROPs (96) are saturated at the higher resolution. For users aiming for 4K, the only viable option is the Medium preset, which averages 67 FPS, but even that is close to the edge, as the minimum recorded is 57 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245 and RTX 3080 combination delivers exceptional performance across all presets. The Low preset averages 246 FPS, which is far beyond the refresh rate of any standard monitor, making it ideal for esports-style play if the game supported it. The Medium preset averages 201 FPS, with a minimum of 171 FPS and a maximum of 231 FPS, providing a very consistent experience. The High preset averages 155 FPS, which is still extremely smooth, and the Ultra preset averages 116 FPS, which is more than enough for a turn-based game. At 2560x1440, the performance remains strong, but the demands increase. The Low preset averages 155 FPS, which is identical to the 1080p High preset, showing that the GPU is still well within its comfort zone. The Medium preset averages 127 FPS, with a minimum of 108 FPS and a maximum of 146 FPS, which is excellent for 1440p gaming. The High preset averages 98 FPS, which is a solid result, and the Ultra preset averages 73 FPS, which is still playable but shows the first signs of strain. At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to struggle. The Low preset averages 82 FPS, which is acceptable, but the Medium preset averages 67 FPS, with a minimum of 57 FPS, indicating that frame pacing may become inconsistent. The High preset averages 51 FPS, which is borderline for a tactical game, as it may feel slightly unresponsive during camera movements. The Ultra preset averages 38 FPS, which is not recommended for a smooth experience. The data shows that the Medium preset at 4K is the only one that maintains an average above 60 FPS, but it is close to the limit, as the minimum is 57 FPS. The High and Ultra presets at 4K are best avoided, as they drop below 60 FPS and approach levels that could cause noticeable stuttering in a game with detailed environments. The measured FPS values also show that the game is well-optimized for lower resolutions, with the 1080p Low preset exceeding 240 FPS, but the engine's rendering path is not efficient enough at 4K to keep up with the RTX 3080's raw power, leading to the steep performance drop.