The Medium

The Medium is one of the heavier horror titles in the database, and pairing it with an Intel Core i5-11400F and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 produces results that sit right at the edge of comfortable play. The recorded data covers three resolutions and four presets, and the short version is this: 1080p Low and 1440p Low clear the 60 FPS threshold, everything above Low drops below it, and 4K is off the table entirely on this pairing. This combo ranks 2897 of 3724 tested combinations in this game, which tells you most of the field runs The Medium faster than this hardware does.

Best Settings per Resolution

The playable threshold in the database is 60 FPS, and only two resolution-and-preset combinations in the measured data meet it.

• 1920x1080 (Full HD): Low preset, averaging 85.2 FPS. This is the only 1080p preset that stays at or above 60 FPS. Medium falls to 50.6, so Low is the ceiling if you demand a steady 60.
• 2560x1440 (Quad HD): Low preset, averaging 69.3 FPS. Again, Low is the only preset that clears the bar at this resolution; Medium manages 45.5.
• 3840x2160 (4K): No playable settings. Even Low averages just 56.5 FPS, short of the 60 FPS target, and Ultra sinks to 20.2.

The pattern is consistent: on this hardware, The Medium is a Low-preset game at 1080p and 1440p, and not a 4K game at all.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data points firmly at a GPU-limited configuration. Moving from 1080p Low to 1440p Low drops the average from 85.2 to 69.3 FPS, and pushing to 4K Low costs another large chunk, down to 56.5 FPS. That is roughly a third of the framerate lost between 1080p and 4K purely from resolution, which is the signature of a graphics card working at its limit. If the CPU were the constraint, framerate would stay nearly flat as resolution climbs.

Preset scaling tells the same story. At 1080p, going from Low to High costs nearly half the framerate, from 85.2 down to 36 FPS, and Ultra lands at 32.9. Those are steep, GPU-shaped penalties for visual quality increases.

The Core i5-11400F is not the weak link here. It is a 6-core, 12-thread Rocket Lake processor with a 4.40 GHz boost clock, 12 MB of shared L3 cache, and a single-thread Passmark score of 2981. It sits in the 71st percentile of all CPUs in the database with an average benchmark score of 17177, comfortably above mid-pack. The RTX 2060, by contrast, sits in the 58th percentile of GPUs with an average benchmark score of 15290. The data indicates the CPU has headroom the GPU cannot use: at Low settings the framerate tracks the GPU almost exclusively, and higher presets simply pile more load onto an already saturated 6 GB Turing card. The Medium also leans on ray-traced-style effects supported by the RTX 2060's 30 RT cores, which is exactly the kind of workload that makes High and Ultra presets punishing for this card.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All numbers below are average FPS from measured runs. Minimum and maximum frametimes were not recorded for these tests.

1920x1080:

• Low: 85.2 FPS average, the strongest result in the entire dataset
• Medium: 50.6 FPS average, below the playable threshold
• High: 36 FPS average
• Ultra: 32.9 FPS average, the weakest 1080p result

2560x1440:

• Low: 69.3 FPS average, playable
• Medium: 45.5 FPS average
• High: 29.9 FPS average
• Ultra: 22.7 FPS average

3840x2160:

• Low: 56.5 FPS average, the closest 4K gets to playable but still short
• Medium: 33.8 FPS average
• High: 28 FPS average
• Ultra: 20.2 FPS average, the lowest number recorded for this combo

Reading the table as a whole, Low is the only preset with any headroom, and even that headroom evaporates between 1440p and 4K. Medium hovers around the mid-40s to low 50s at 1080p and 1440p, which is smooth enough for a slower horror game but does not meet the database's 60 FPS standard. High and Ultra are effectively unusable at every resolution tested on this pairing.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run The Medium, but with tight constraints. According to the verdict data:

• 1080p Low at 85.2 FPS is comfortably playable, with a genuine margin above the 60 FPS threshold.
• 1440p Low at 69.3 FPS is playable, though the margin is thinner and dips below 60 in heavier scenes are plausible.
• 4K is not playable at any preset. The best case, Low at 56.5 FPS, misses the threshold, and every other preset falls off quickly from there.

Practical guidance for a builder running this exact hardware: play at 1080p Low for the most fluid experience, accept 1440p Low if you value resolution over framerate headroom, and skip 4K entirely. Medium preset is a judgment call, 50.6 FPS at 1080p is workable for a game in this genre, but the recorded data does not certify it as playable under the 60 FPS standard. The Medium launched on 2021-01-27, and this GPU, a Turing card from the 20-series with 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus and 336 GB/s of memory bandwidth, was already end-of-life territory by then; the data reflects that age plainly.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU side, the database lists four rivals within a fraction of a percent of the Core i5-11400F's average score of 17177:

• AMD EPYC 7H12 (avgScore 17120, 0.3% below the i5-11400F)
• Intel Core i5-12450H (avgScore 17239, 0.4% above)
• AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (avgScore 17278, 0.6% above)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (avgScore 17074, 0.6% below)

Any of these processors would deliver effectively identical CPU-side behavior in The Medium, and since this game is GPU-limited on this pairing, the differences would be invisible in practice.

For the GPU, the RTX 2060's average score of 15290 is nearly matched by:

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (avgScore 15283, 0% delta, a statistical tie)
• AMD Radeon 680M (avgScore 15270, 0.1% below)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (avgScore 15199, 0.6% below)
• AMD Radeon RX 7600 (avgScore 15171, 0.8% below)

Swap the RTX 2060 for any of these and the framerate picture in The Medium should look broadly similar, with the same Low-preset requirement at 1080p and 1440p and the same 4K shortfall. Note that the Radeon 680M is an integrated solution while the GTX 580 is a far older discrete design; the database averages place them at parity on aggregate scores, but in this specific GPU-bound title the pattern of results should hold across the group.

How This Combo Ranks

Against the 3724 hardware combinations tested in The Medium, the Core i5-11400F plus RTX 2060 ranks 2897th. That places it in the bottom quarter of the field, which matches the measured behavior: most tested systems run this game faster, and the playable envelope for this combo is limited to Low settings at two of the three tested resolutions. The ranking is not a surprise given the components involved. The CPU contributes 71st-percentile class performance, but the GPU drags the pairing down in a title that punishes weaker graphics hardware at higher presets.

The takeaway is straightforward. If you already own this combination, The Medium is playable at 1080p Low with room to spare and at 1440p Low with a modest buffer. If smooth 60 FPS gameplay at Medium or higher matters to you, the data shows this GPU is the component to upgrade first, and the CPU can stay.