The Medium

FAQ

Q: Can the Intel Core i5-10400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 run The Medium at 4K?

A: Yes, at 4K the combo achieves 66.5 FPS on High settings, 74.6 FPS on Medium, and 90.6 FPS on Low. Ultra settings drop to 51.3 FPS, which falls below the 60 FPS playable threshold.

Q: What is the best playable preset at 2560x1440?

A: Ultra settings are playable at 1440p, with an average of 68.1 FPS. This is the highest preset that stays above 60 FPS at this resolution.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 compare to its nearest rival in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5090's average benchmark score is 79,842. Its closest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, scores 79,605, placing the RTX 5090 just 0.3% ahead. The AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT trails by 1.1%.

Q: What is the CPU's benchmark standing relative to other processors?

A: The i5-10400F has an average benchmark score of 14,185 and sits at the 68th percentile among all CPUs. It is within 0.6% of its nearest rivals, including the Intel Core 7 160UL and AMD Ryzen 3 7320C.

Q: Which resolution shows the largest gap between Low and Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160, the gap between Low (90.6 FPS) and Ultra (51.3 FPS) is 39.3 FPS, the largest spread across all three resolutions. At 1440p the spread is 33.0 FPS, and at 1080p it is 37.2 FPS.

Q: Does the game scale better with settings at lower resolutions?

A: The data suggests the opposite. At 1080p, going from Low to Ultra costs 37.2 FPS, while at 4K the same settings change costs 39.3 FPS. The absolute FPS loss is similar, but the relative impact is larger at 4K because the starting point is lower.

Similar Performance Alternatives

The database places this CPU and GPU combination among a specific performance neighborhood. For the Intel Core i5-10400F, the nearest rivals in average benchmark score are the Intel Xeon 6756E (14,163, only 0.2% lower), the Intel Core 7 160UL (14,232, 0.3% higher), the AMD EPYC 7552 (14,115, 0.5% lower), and the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C (14,277, 0.6% higher). These four processors bracket the i5-10400F within a remarkably tight window of less than 1% total spread. For gaming workloads that rely on the CPU, any of these chips would likely produce nearly identical frame pacing in The Medium, assuming the GPU is not the limiting factor.

On the GPU side, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090's average benchmark score of 79,842 places it near the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79,605, 0.3% lower), the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79,396, 0.6% lower), the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940, 1.1% lower), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (80,959, 1.4% higher). The RTX 5090 edges out the Tesla P100 variants by fractions of a percent, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64X sits slightly above. In practical terms, these GPUs should deliver similar average frame rates in The Medium, though the RTX 5090's 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and Blackwell 2.0 architecture may behave differently in specific scenes that stress memory bandwidth or ray tracing features.

The measured FPS figures in the database reflect the actual combo, not these alternatives. However, given the close synthetic scores, a system swapping the i5-10400F for a Xeon 6756E or the RTX 5090 for a Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB would likely land within a few frames per second of the numbers reported here. The AMD Ryzen 3 7320C, despite being a lower-tier part in name, matches the i5-10400F closely enough that its in-game performance would be difficult to distinguish.

Best Settings per Resolution

At 1920x1080, the most demanding preset that maintains at least 60 FPS is Ultra, with an average of 71.6 FPS. The full 1080p ladder shows Low at 108.8 FPS, Medium at 87.3 FPS, and High at 78.0 FPS, all comfortably above the playable threshold.

At 2560x1440, Ultra again qualifies as the best playable setting, averaging 68.1 FPS. Lower presets provide additional headroom: High at 74.0 FPS, Medium at 83.7 FPS, and Low at 101.1 FPS. The 1440p Ultra result is only 3.5 FPS below the 1080p Ultra figure, indicating that this combo handles the resolution jump without a dramatic penalty at the highest preset.

At 3840x2160, Ultra falls to 51.3 FPS, below the 60 FPS threshold, so the best playable preset becomes High at 66.5 FPS. Medium runs at 74.6 FPS, and Low at 90.6 FPS. The 4K High result is just 1.5 FPS below the 1440p High result, which suggests the GPU has enough headroom at 4K to absorb the resolution increase when settings are not maxed out.

The Verdict

This PC can run The Medium at all three tested resolutions, but not always at the highest preset. The verdict by resolution is clear. At 1920x1080, every preset from Low to Ultra clears 60 FPS, with Ultra averaging 71.6 FPS. At 2560x1440, the full range is also playable, and Ultra holds 68.1 FPS. At 3840x2160, three of four presets are playable: High at 66.5 FPS, Medium at 74.6 FPS, and Low at 90.6 FPS. The only non-playable configuration is 4K Ultra at 51.3 FPS.

The pattern indicates that the RTX 5090 is the dominant factor at 4K, where the gap between Ultra and High is 15.2 FPS, while the CPU becomes relatively more important at lower resolutions. Players targeting 4K should select High settings for a stable experience above 60 FPS, while those at 1080p or 1440p can max out the game without concern. The 60 FPS threshold is crossed with room to spare in most configurations, making this a capable horror gaming setup for The Medium.

CPU and GPU Roles

The measured FPS data reveals how the workload shifts between the i5-10400F and the RTX 5090 across resolutions. At 1080p, the GPU is less stressed, so the CPU's ability to feed frames becomes more visible. The spread from Low (108.8 FPS) to Ultra (71.6 FPS) at 1080p is 37.2 FPS, meaning the GPU still has a large impact on settings, but the ceiling is likely set by the CPU at the Low preset. At 1440p, the Low preset drops to 101.1 FPS, a 7.7 FPS decrease from 1080p Low, while Ultra drops only 3.5 FPS to 68.1. This smaller drop at Ultra suggests the GPU is already near its limit at high settings, so the resolution change matters less.

At 4K, the trend sharpens. Low settings yield 90.6 FPS, down 10.5 FPS from 1440p Low, while Ultra yields 51.3 FPS, down 16.8 FPS from 1440p Ultra. The larger absolute drop at Ultra indicates that the RTX 5090's rendering load scales significantly with resolution when settings are maxed. The CPU's role is more evident at Low presets: from 1080p Low to 4K Low, the drop is 18.2 FPS, which is less than the 20.3 FPS drop from 1080p Ultra to 4K Ultra. Both components contribute, but the GPU is the primary driver of the differences between presets, while the CPU sets the upper bound at low settings where the GPU has spare capacity.

The data implies that for The Medium, the RTX 5090 is the bottleneck at Ultra settings across all resolutions, while the i5-10400F becomes the limiting factor at Low settings, particularly at 1080p where the GPU could otherwise push higher frame rates. Players seeking higher FPS at Low settings would benefit more from a CPU upgrade, while those running High or Ultra should focus on the GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The database ranks this specific CPU and GPU combination at 733 out of 3,724 tested combos for The Medium. That places it in the top 19.7% of all configurations in the database. The rank reflects the combination's ability to run the game across the tested presets and resolutions, weighted by the measured FPS values.

Given that the RTX 5090 sits at the 92nd percentile among all GPUs and the i5-10400F at the 68th percentile among all CPUs, the combo's rank of 733 makes sense. The GPU carries most of the weight in this pairing, and the CPU is sufficient to avoid major bottlenecks at most settings. The rank also implies that many combos with faster CPUs achieve higher FPS at Low presets, where CPU limits are exposed, while the RTX 5090 ensures strong performance at High and Ultra. The top 19.7% placement is respectable, but the i5-10400F's mid-range CPU standing prevents this combo from reaching the upper echelons of the database.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080:

• Low: 108.8 FPS average
• Medium: 87.3 FPS average
• High: 78.0 FPS average
• Ultra: 71.6 FPS average

2560x1440:

• Low: 101.1 FPS average
• Medium: 83.7 FPS average
• High: 74.0 FPS average
• Ultra: 68.1 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 90.6 FPS average
• Medium: 74.6 FPS average
• High: 66.5 FPS average
• Ultra: 51.3 FPS average

The database records only average FPS for this game, with no minimum or maximum values available. The progression across resolutions follows an expected pattern: each step up in resolution reduces FPS, and each step up in settings reduces FPS. The 4K Ultra figure is the only result below the 60 FPS playable threshold, making it the sole configuration that fails the playability criterion. The 1080p Low figure of 108.8 FPS is the highest recorded result, and the 4K Ultra figure of 51.3 FPS is the lowest. The data shows a consistent 12 to 15 FPS cost for each settings tier at a given resolution, with the exception of the 4K Ultra drop, which costs 15.2 FPS over 4K High.