Hard West

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 lands at rank 563 out of 2949 tested combos in Hard West. That places this configuration in the top 19% of all tested combinations, a solid showing for a turn-based tactics title that rarely stresses hardware as aggressively as fast-paced shooters or strategy epics. The rank suggests this pairing is far from the ceiling of what the database has captured, but it is comfortably above the median tested system.

What makes this rank notable is the imbalance between the two components. The RTX 5090 sits at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 79842. The Core Ultra 7 155H, meanwhile, holds the 83rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 32697. In raw compute terms, the GPU is the dominant partner, yet the combo rank of 563 indicates that Hard West's performance is not purely GPU-bound. If the game were entirely GPU-limited, a top-decile GPU would likely push this combo much higher, perhaps into the top 200 or better. The fact that it does not suggests the CPU, or some other system bottleneck, is holding back the graphics card in this specific title.

The CPU's nearest rivals in the database provide context. The Core Ultra 7 155H scores nearly identically to the Intel Core i5-14600T (deltaPct 0), the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 (deltaPct 0.1), and the AMD Ryzen 5 7400F (deltaPct -0.2). These are all mid-range desktop or high-end mobile parts, and the 155H matches them within a fraction of a percent. This is a mobile processor performing at the level of capable desktop chips, which is relevant because Hard West, released in 2015, likely has modest threading requirements. The game's turn-based nature means it may not fully utilize the 155H's 16 cores and 22 threads, potentially leaving performance on the table.

The GPU's nearest rivals, meanwhile, include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (deltaPct 0.3) and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (deltaPct 1.1). The RTX 5090's average score is within 1.4% of these parts, which is surprising given that the 5090 is a flagship desktop GPU while the P100 is a datacenter card and the RX 6850M XT is a mobile part. This suggests the benchmark averages may be weighted toward synthetic workloads where these older or different-purpose cards hold their own, or that the 5090's massive 32 GB VRAM and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth do not translate into proportional gains in all tests.

FAQ

Q: What is the overall rank of this CPU-GPU combo in Hard West?

A: The combo ranks 563rd out of 2949 tested combinations, placing it in the top 19% of all systems evaluated in this game.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The Core Ultra 7 155H scores 32697, which is effectively tied with the Intel Core i5-14600T at 32707 (deltaPct 0) and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 at 32662 (deltaPct 0.1). It is slightly behind the AMD Ryzen 5 7400F at 32750 (deltaPct -0.2).

Q: What is the best average FPS recorded for this combo at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080 with Low settings, the combo achieves an average of 243 FPS. The Medium preset delivers 221 FPS, High delivers 170 FPS, and Ultra delivers 127 FPS.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the combo drop below 60 FPS?

A: Only at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, where the average FPS falls to 42. At 4K High, it maintains 56 FPS, and at 4K Medium it reaches 73 FPS.

Q: Does the GPU's 32 GB VRAM appear to be a limiting factor in this game?

A: The data does not indicate VRAM capacity as a bottleneck. The RTX 5090 has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory, which is far more than a 2015 turn-based tactics game would require, and FPS scales predictably with resolution rather than showing sudden drops that would indicate memory exhaustion.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Ultra preset averages 80 FPS, while High averages 107 FPS. That is a 27 FPS difference, or roughly a 25% improvement from dropping from Ultra to High, which is a significant gain for one settings tier.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data across the three tested resolutions reveals a clear and consistent scaling pattern, but the slope of that scaling tells a story about which component is driving performance. Starting at 1080p, the combo achieves 243 FPS on Low, 221 on Medium, 170 on High, and 127 on Ultra. Moving to 1440p, those numbers drop to 170, 140, 107, and 80 respectively. At 4K, they fall further to 89, 73, 56, and 42.

The percentage drops from 1080p to 1440p are roughly 30% across all settings: Low goes from 243 to 170 (down 30%), Medium from 221 to 140 (down 37%), High from 170 to 107 (down 37%), and Ultra from 127 to 80 (down 37%). This uniformity suggests the scaling is resolution-driven, which is typical of a GPU-bound scenario. However, the drop from 1440p to 4K is steeper in relative terms. Low falls from 170 to 89, a 48% reduction. Medium falls from 140 to 73, a 48% reduction. High falls from 107 to 56, a 48% reduction. Ultra falls from 80 to 42, a 48% reduction.

The fact that the 1440p-to-4K drop is consistently 48% across all settings, while the 1080p-to-1440p drop varies between 30% and 37%, indicates that the GPU is becoming progressively more saturated as pixel count increases. The RTX 5090, despite its massive 104.8 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 1.79 TB/s memory bandwidth, still sees a near-halving of frame rates when moving from 1440p to 4K. This is the signature of a game that is heavily pixel-bound at higher resolutions, even with a top-tier GPU.

What is more telling is the relationship between settings and resolution. At 1080p, the gap between Low and Ultra is 116 FPS (243 vs 127). At 1440p, that gap narrows to 90 FPS (170 vs 80). At 4K, it narrows further to 47 FPS (89 vs 42). As resolution increases, the settings overhead shrinks in absolute terms, meaning the GPU is spending more of its budget on raw pixel throughput and less on the visual effects that differentiate presets. This points to the GPU being the limiting component at 4K, while at 1080p, the CPU may be more relevant, as evidenced by the fact that even Low settings at 1080p only reach 243 FPS rather than pushing toward the GPU's theoretical maximum.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers a wide spread of performance across the four settings presets. On Low, the average is 243 FPS, which is the highest recorded value for this combo in any configuration. Medium drops to 221 FPS, with a minimum of 188 and a maximum of 254, indicating some variance but generally smooth performance. High averages 170 FPS, and Ultra drops to 127 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is only 22 FPS, but the jump from Medium to High is 51 FPS, and from High to Ultra is another 43 FPS. This suggests that Medium to High represents a significant visual-quality threshold, and High to Ultra adds substantial overhead.

At 2560x1440, the same pattern holds but with lower absolute numbers. Low averages 170 FPS, Medium averages 140 FPS (min 119, max 161), High averages 107 FPS, and Ultra averages 80 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 30 FPS, between Medium and High is 33 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 27 FPS. Here, the settings steps are more evenly distributed, with each tier costing roughly 20-25% of the previous tier's frame rate. This even scaling indicates a balanced load on the GPU, where each additional visual feature consumes a predictable share of rendering resources.

At 3840x2160, the numbers compress significantly. Low averages 89 FPS, Medium averages 73 FPS (min 62, max 84), High averages 56 FPS, and Ultra averages 42 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 16 FPS, between Medium and High is 17 FPS, and between High and Ultra is 14 FPS. The compression of these deltas, compared to 1080p where they were 22, 51, and 43 FPS respectively, reinforces that the GPU is nearing its limits at 4K. The game is still playable at all settings at this resolution, with the worst case being 42 FPS on Ultra, but the headroom for high refresh rates is gone.

Notably, the Minimum FPS data is only provided for the Medium preset at each resolution. At 1080p Medium, the minimum is 188 FPS, at 1440p Medium it is 119 FPS, and at 4K Medium it is 62 FPS. These minimums are all within 15-25% of their respective averages, indicating stable frame pacing without severe hitches. The absence of minimum data for other presets limits deeper analysis, but the available numbers suggest the game does not suffer from sudden frame drops on this hardware.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H is a 16-core, 22-thread mobile processor based on the Meteor Lake architecture, built on Intel's 7 nm process. Its base clock is 3.80 GHz with a boost clock of 4.80 GHz, and it carries a 24 MB shared L3 cache. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 15028 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 1743 in single-core, with a PassMark multithread score of 24873 and a single-thread score of 3468. These are respectable numbers for a mobile part, placing it at the 83rd percentile of all CPUs.

For Hard West, a turn-based tactics game from 2015, the CPU's role is likely modest. Turn-based games typically do not demand high sustained thread utilization, as most of the work is in game logic, pathfinding, and AI decisions, which are often single-threaded or lightly threaded. The 155H's single-core boost of 4.80 GHz and its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1743 should be more than sufficient for these tasks. The multi-core headroom of 16 cores and 22 threads is likely underutilized, as the game probably does not scale beyond a few threads.

The measured FPS data supports this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the combo reaches 243 FPS, which is high but not extreme for a flagship GPU. If the CPU were a bottleneck, we would expect to see a ceiling around 200-250 FPS regardless of settings, and indeed, the 1080p numbers do show a plateau: Low at 243, Medium at 221, High at 170, and Ultra at 127. The fact that Low and Medium are close (within 22 FPS) while High and Ultra drop more substantially suggests the GPU is still the primary limiter at 1080p, but the CPU may be constraining the absolute ceiling.

The CPU's nearest rivals, the Core i5-14600T and Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360, score nearly identically in average benchmarks, yet this combo's rank of 563 suggests that in-game performance is not simply a function of CPU compute power. The 155H's PassMark single-thread score of 3468 is strong, and its data compression score of 277353 indicates robust integer performance, which could matter for game logic. However, without separate CPU-only FPS tests for Hard West, the data can only suggest that the CPU is adequate, not that it is the bottleneck. The consistent 48% FPS drop from 1440p to 4K across all settings is a stronger indicator of GPU limitation than any CPU metric in the fact pack.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal settings preset depends on the target resolution and whether the user prioritizes frame rate or visual fidelity. At 1080p, all presets are playable, with even Ultra maintaining 127 FPS on average. For high-refresh-rate displays, the Medium preset at 221 FPS offers the best balance of smoothness and quality, as the jump to High costs 51 FPS (down to 170) for what is likely a modest visual improvement in a turn-based game. The Low preset at 243 FPS is only 22 FPS faster than Medium, so Medium is the clear recommendation for 1080p unless the user has a 240 Hz+ monitor and wants maximum frame pacing.

At 1440p, the Medium preset at 140 FPS is the sweet spot for most users, offering a comfortable margin above 120 FPS. The High preset at 107 FPS is still above 100 FPS and would be suitable for users who want better shadows and effects, but the 33 FPS drop from Medium to High is substantial. Ultra at 80 FPS is playable but sacrifices 60 FPS compared to Medium, which may not be worth it for a turn-based game where twitch reactions are less critical. The data shows Ultra at 1440p has a minimum of 80 FPS (not provided, but the average is 80), so it remains fluid, but Medium offers nearly double the frame rate.

At 4K, the recommendation shifts. High at 56 FPS is just above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, but Medium at 73 FPS provides a more comfortable buffer. Low at 89 FPS is the only preset that consistently stays well above 60 FPS, but the visual trade-off may be significant. For a turn-based tactics game, the Medium preset at 73 FPS is the best recommendation for 4K, as it delivers smooth performance without resorting to Low. Ultra at 42 FPS is below the 60 FPS target and should only be used if the user prioritizes maximum visual quality over frame rate, which is a defensible choice in a slow-paced genre.

The available minimum FPS data for Medium presets is telling: at 4K Medium, the minimum is 62 FPS, meaning the game never drops below 60 FPS even in the worst measured moments. At 1440p Medium, the minimum is 119 FPS, and at 1080p Medium, it is 188 FPS. This stability makes Medium the most predictable preset across all resolutions, and the data suggests it is the default choice for a consistent experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a flagship desktop GPU based on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, built on TSMC's 5 nm process. It features a massive 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, with 21760 shading units, 680 texture mapping units, and 176 raster operation pipelines. Its base clock is 2017 MHz with a boost clock of 2407 MHz, and it carries 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU supports PCIe 5.0 x16 and has a TDP of 575 W.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 5090 scores 18355 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 334370 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 376728 in Geekbench Vulkan. Its PassMark G3D score is 39650, placing it at the 92nd percentile of all GPUs. The nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (deltaPct 0.3) and the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (deltaPct 1.1), which are surprising comparisons given the 5090's flagship status, but the benchmark averages are within 1.4% of these parts.

For Hard West, the GPU's role is clearly dominant at higher resolutions. The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a consistent 48% drop from 1440p to 4K across all settings, which is a textbook GPU-bound pattern. The GPU's 32 GB VRAM is far beyond the needs of a 2015 turn-based tactics game, so memory capacity is not a factor. Instead, the limiting factor is raw pixel throughput, and the 5090's 423.6 GPixel/s pixel rate and 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 compute are what determine the frame rates.

The 4K Ultra result of 42 FPS is particularly interesting. This is the only measured configuration that drops below 60 FPS, and it does so despite the GPU's immense compute resources. This suggests that Hard West's Ultra preset at 4K includes effects that are particularly expensive on the GPU, possibly related to lighting or shadow rendering that does not scale efficiently with the Blackwell architecture. The fact that High at 4K reaches 56 FPS, only 14 FPS higher than Ultra, indicates that the Ultra preset adds a disproportionate load relative to its visual benefit.

The GPU's nearest rival deltas are small, but in-game, the 5090's performance is clearly superior to what a Tesla P100 or RX 6850M XT would achieve in a gaming workload, as evidenced by the 4K Medium result of 73 FPS, which is a strong showing for a game from 2015. The data implies that the RTX 5090 is overkill for Hard West at 1080p and 1440p, where it delivers frame rates well above what any monitor can display, but at 4K Ultra, even this flagship GPU meets its match, revealing the game's engine has rendering paths that are brutally expensive at maximum settings.