The Medium

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 paired with the Intel Arc B370 lands at rank 3439 out of 3724 tested combinations in The Medium. That places this build in the bottom 8% of the database, a position that reflects the GPU's extreme limitation rather than the CPU's capability. The recorded data shows this combo trailing the overwhelming majority of systems, and the frame rates confirm why: no preset at any resolution reaches the 60 FPS playability threshold.

The CPU itself sits in the 73rd percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 19593. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 at 19617 (0.1% higher), the Intel Core i5-12500 at 19668 (0.4% higher), the Intel Core i7-10700F at 19499 (0.5% lower), and the Intel Core i5-11600KF at 19723 (0.7% higher). These deltas are all within a single percentage point, meaning the Ryzen 5 5500 is essentially performance-equivalent to that cluster of CPUs. The processor is not the bottleneck here.

The Intel Arc B370, however, tells a different story. Its average benchmark score is 1184, placing it in the 5th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 at 1186 (0.2% higher), the ATI Radeon HD 5770 at 1190 (0.5% higher), the AMD Radeon HD 7650M at 1192 (0.7% higher), and the AMD FirePro M2000 at 1168 (1.4% lower). The Arc B370 is surrounded by hardware from a much older era. That context explains why this combo ranks so low in The Medium: the GPU is producing frame rates that belong to a different performance class entirely.

FAQ

Q: Can this PC run The Medium at 60 FPS?

A: No. The database shows no resolution or preset combination reaching 60 FPS. The best recorded average is 46 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings, which is still 14 FPS short of the playability threshold.

Q: What is the highest average frame rate achieved by this combo?

A: The highest recorded average is 46 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. At the same resolution, Medium averages 29 FPS, High averages 21 FPS, and Ultra averages 16 FPS.

Q: How does the GPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Intel Arc B370 scores 1184 in the database, which is within 1.4% of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 (1186), ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1190), AMD Radeon HD 7650M (1192), and AMD FirePro M2000 (1168). All five GPUs are effectively in the same performance tier.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 averages 19593, within 0.7% of the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 (19617), Intel Core i5-12500 (19668), Intel Core i7-10700F (19499), and Intel Core i5-11600KF (19723). These processors are all statistically equivalent in the database.

Q: Which resolution shows the best frame rate?

A: 1920x1080 offers the highest averages across all settings. Low hits 46 FPS, Medium 29 FPS, High 21 FPS, and Ultra 16 FPS. At 2560x1440, Low drops to 39 FPS, and at 3840x2160, Low falls to 30 FPS.

Q: Is there any playable setting at any resolution?

A: No. The verdict by resolution lists empty playable settings arrays for 3840x2160, 2560x1440, and 1920x1080. Every preset fails to clear the 60 FPS threshold.

CPU and GPU Roles

The data reveals a system where the GPU dominates the performance ceiling, but the CPU's role becomes visible when comparing frame rates across resolutions and presets. At 3840x2160, Low settings average 30 FPS, Medium averages 19 FPS, and High averages 14 FPS. At 2560x1440, those same settings produce 39 FPS, 24 FPS, and 17 FPS respectively. At 1920x1080, Low reaches 46 FPS, Medium 29 FPS, and High 21 FPS.

The scaling pattern is consistent: lowering resolution improves frame rates, but the gains are modest. Moving from 3840x2160 to 1920x1080 at Low settings improves from 30 FPS to 46 FPS, a 16 FPS increase. At Medium settings, the same resolution drop improves from 19 FPS to 29 FPS, a 10 FPS increase. At High settings, it improves from 14 FPS to 21 FPS, a 7 FPS increase. These gains suggest that the GPU is saturated even at the lowest resolution, and reducing pixel count cannot fully compensate for the graphics hardware's raw throughput limits.

The CPU's contribution is harder to isolate because every configuration is GPU-bound. The Ryzen 5 5500's benchmark profile indicates it is more than capable of feeding this GPU, with multicore scores like 16429 in Cinebench R23 and 6900 in Cinebench R20. The processor's 16 MB of L3 cache and 6 cores with 12 threads provide ample headroom for a game like The Medium, which is not known for extreme CPU demands. The recorded frame rates do not vary in a way that would indicate CPU stalls; instead, they collapse consistently as GPU load rises with preset quality.

Preset scaling reinforces the GPU-bound reading. At 1920x1080, dropping from Ultra to Low improves the average from 16 FPS to 46 FPS, a 30 FPS swing. At 2560x1440, the same preset change improves from 14 FPS to 39 FPS, a 25 FPS swing. At 3840x2160, it improves from 11 FPS to 30 FPS, a 19 FPS swing. The fact that preset quality changes have a larger impact than resolution changes points to the GPU's fill rate and shading capacity as the limiting factor. The Arc B370's 6.144 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 48.00 GPixel/s pixel rate are simply insufficient for this game's rendering load.

The Verdict

This PC cannot run The Medium at a playable level. The verdict by resolution is unambiguous: no playable settings exist at 3840x2160, 2560x1440, or 1920x1080. The playable threshold is 60 FPS, and the best recorded average across all twelve tested configurations is 46 FPS at 1080p Low. That is the closest this combo comes, and it still falls 14 FPS short.

The GPU is the clear culprit. The Intel Arc B370 ranks in the 5th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals are integrated and legacy mobile parts from over a decade ago. The Ryzen 5 5500, by contrast, ranks in the 73rd percentile of CPUs and sits within 0.7% of several modern desktop processors. Swapping the GPU for something in a higher percentile would likely transform this system's results, but as configured, the data is definitive: 60 FPS is out of reach at every resolution and every preset.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 3840x2160, the recorded averages are as follows: Ultra averages 11 FPS, High averages 14 FPS, Medium averages 19 FPS with a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 22, and Low averages 30 FPS. No minimum or maximum values were recorded for Ultra, High, or Low at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, Ultra averages 14 FPS, High averages 17 FPS, Medium averages 24 FPS with a minimum of 21 and a maximum of 28, and Low averages 39 FPS. Again, only Medium includes min/max data.

At 1920x1080, Ultra averages 16 FPS, High averages 21 FPS, Medium averages 29 FPS with a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 33, and Low averages 46 FPS. Medium is the only preset at this resolution with recorded min/max values.

The pattern is consistent across all three resolutions: Low settings deliver roughly double the frame rate of Ultra settings, and Medium sits between them. The gap between Low and Medium is larger than the gap between Medium and High, suggesting that the most demanding rendering features are concentrated in the higher preset tiers.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 3840x2160, no preset reaches 60 FPS, and the verdict records no best settings. The highest average is 30 FPS at Low, but that is still 30 FPS below the playability threshold.

At 2560x1440, the same situation applies. No preset reaches 60 FPS, and the verdict records no best settings. Low averages 39 FPS, the best result at this resolution, but it misses the threshold by 21 FPS.

At 1920x1080, no preset reaches 60 FPS either. Low averages 46 FPS, which is the best result across all tested configurations, but it falls 14 FPS short of the threshold. The verdict lists no playable settings for any resolution, confirming that this combo cannot maintain 60 FPS under any tested condition.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU, the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 has four near-neighbors in the database. The AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 scores 19617, just 0.1% higher. The Intel Core i5-12500 scores 19668, 0.4% higher. The Intel Core i7-10700F scores 19499, 0.5% lower. The Intel Core i5-11600KF scores 19723, 0.7% higher. Any of these processors would behave nearly identically in this system, since the deltas are all under 1%.

For the GPU, the Intel Arc B370's nearest rivals are far older parts. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5570 scores 1186, 0.2% higher. The ATI Radeon HD 5770 scores 1190, 0.5% higher. The AMD Radeon HD 7650M scores 1192, 0.7% higher. The AMD FirePro M2000 scores 1168, 1.4% lower. A user swapping the Arc B370 for any of these alternatives would see essentially the same frame rates in The Medium, because the performance delta is negligible.

The practical implication is that the GPU choice anchors this combo's results. The CPU has a wide field of equivalent replacements that would not change the outcome, while the GPU's nearest rivals are all from a much older hardware generation, reinforcing that this graphics solution is the binding constraint.