The Medium

The Intel Core i7-13700K paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is a measured combination in The Medium's benchmark database, ranked 801 of 3724 tested combos. The data shows a pairing that comfortably clears the 60 FPS playability threshold at every resolution — but with sharply different ceiling behavior depending on the preset. At 1080p the combo reaches 150.8 FPS on Low, while at 4K Ultra it drops to 32.5 FPS, framing the practical question: not whether the game runs, but which preset holds the line at each resolution.

Best Settings per Resolution

The playable threshold in this dataset is 60 FPS average, and the most demanding preset that stays at or above it differs by resolution more than one might expect.

At 1920x1080, the ceiling is High at 69.2 FPS. Ultra falls short at 54.7 FPS, sitting roughly 5 points under the threshold, so High is the practical maximum for a 60 FPS experience at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the ceiling drops to Medium at 78.5 FPS. High at 1440p lands at 55.5 FPS — below threshold — so the step down from High to Medium is what keeps the game playable at this resolution, and it does so with a comfortable margin.

At 3840x2160, Medium again is the answer, at 62.8 FPS. That margin is thin — barely 3 FPS above the threshold — and the next step up, High, comes in at 46.2 FPS, well below playable. Low remains a fallback at 100.4 FPS if headroom matters more than fidelity.

The pattern is telling: 1440p and 4K share the same best preset, but the safety margin at 4K is nearly gone, while at 1440p it is substantial.

CPU and GPU Roles

The scaling data points clearly to a GPU-bound game at higher resolutions. From 1080p to 4K on Medium, average framerate falls from 92.1 to 62.8 FPS — a 32% drop driven purely by pixel count. On Low, the drop is steeper: 150.8 FPS at 1080p becomes 100.4 FPS at 4K, a 33% decline. When resolution is the only variable and framerate moves this much, the graphics card is the limiting component.

Preset scaling reinforces this. At 1080p, moving from Low to Ultra cuts the average from 150.8 to 54.7 FPS — nearly a factor of three. That is a large sensitivity to visual settings, characteristic of a GPU-limited workload rather than a CPU-limited one.

Where the CPU matters is at the low-settings, low-resolution end. At 1080p Low, the framerate of 150.8 FPS is well beyond what most displays need, and the i7-13700K's credentials — a single-thread Passmark score of 4333, a Geekbench single-core score of 2529, and a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 30745 — indicate it is not the bottleneck anywhere in this dataset. The game never pushes the combo into a regime where the processor's 24 threads or 5.40 GHz boost clock become the constraint; every measured result scales with GPU load.

In short: at 1080p the CPU/GPU balance is closer because the GPU has spare capacity, and at 1440p and 4K the RTX 4070 is decisively the component setting the framerate.

FAQ

Q: Can the i7-13700K + RTX 4070 run The Medium at 4K?

A: Yes, with conditions. Medium is the highest preset that clears 60 FPS, at 62.8 FPS average. High (46.2 FPS) and Ultra (32.5 FPS) are below the playable threshold. Low runs at 100.4 FPS if maximum fluidity is desired.

Q: What is the fastest measured framerate for this combo in the game?

A: 150.8 FPS average, at 1920x1080 on the Low preset.

Q: Does the combo hold 60 FPS at 1440p on High?

A: No. High at 2560x1440 averages 55.5 FPS. Medium is the best playable preset at that resolution, averaging 78.5 FPS.

Q: Is the CPU fast enough for this game?

A: The data indicates yes with wide margin. The i7-13700K sits in the 89th percentile of all CPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 46881, and the game's framerates scale with GPU settings rather than CPU load.

Q: How does this pairing rank against other tested combinations for The Medium?

A: It ranks 801 out of 3724 combos — in the upper portion of the database, consistent with a capable but not flagship-tier pairing.

Q: Can the game run at Ultra anywhere?

A: Not at 60 FPS. Ultra measures 54.7 FPS at 1080p, 43.9 FPS at 1440p, and 32.5 FPS at 4K — below the threshold at every resolution.

The Verdict

Yes, this PC can run The Medium — at every resolution tested, provided the preset is chosen sensibly.

At 1920x1080, Low, Medium, and High all clear 60 FPS; the best playable setting is High at 69.2 FPS. At 2560x1440, Low and Medium clear the bar, with Medium at 78.5 FPS as the best option. At 3840x2160, Low and Medium are playable, and Medium at 62.8 FPS is the best — though the margin over the threshold is slim. Ultra is off the table at any resolution for a 60 FPS target.

The overall picture: a strong 1080p and 1440p experience with room to spare, and a viable but tightly constrained 4K experience. Horror games like The Medium, released in 2021, are less frame-rate-critical than competitive shooters, but the data still favors the 1440p Medium configuration, which delivers nearly 80 FPS with visual quality intact.

Similar Performance Alternatives

For the CPU side, the i7-13700K's nearest rivals by aggregate score are tightly clustered. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900 averages 46971 — within 0.2% of the Intel chip's 46881 — and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 is within 0.3% at 47022. The AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX and Intel Xeon w3-2535 sit within 0.5% at 46654 and 46653 respectively. Any of these processors would deliver effectively indistinguishable results in a GPU-bound title like The Medium, where the measured framerates track graphics load rather than compute throughput.

On the GPU side, the RTX 4070 (average score 37648, 81st percentile among GPUs) has equally close neighbors. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 is within 0.1% at 37628, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 within 0.4% at 37507, and the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 within 1.3% at 37157. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile is the outlier, scoring 38135 — about 1.3% higher than the desktop 4070 — and would be expected to shift every measured framerate upward slightly, potentially pushing 4K High closer to the 60 FPS line. None of these swaps would change the fundamental verdict; the closest rivals bracket the 4070 within roughly a percent in either direction.

How This Combo Ranks

Against the 3724 combinations tested in The Medium, the i7-13700K + RTX 4070 pairing ranks 801st. That places it solidly in the upper tier — better than roughly three-quarters of tested hardware pairings — while leaving meaningful headroom above it for higher-end GPU configurations. Given that the game is GPU-bound on this combo, most of the rank separation above it would come from faster graphics cards rather than faster processors; the i7-13700K's 89th-percentile CPU standing suggests the processor is not what caps the ranking.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All figures below are measured average framerates for the i7-13700K + RTX 4070 combination in The Medium. Minimum and maximum values were not captured in this dataset.

1920x1080

| Preset | Avg FPS | Playable (≥60) |

|---|---|---|

| Low | 150.8 | Yes |

| Medium | 92.1 | Yes |

| High | 69.2 | Yes |

| Ultra | 54.7 | No |

2560x1440

| Preset | Avg FPS | Playable (≥60) |

|---|---|---|

| Low | 126.5 | Yes |

| Medium | 78.5 | Yes |

| High | 55.5 | No |

| Ultra | 43.9 | No |

3840x2160

| Preset | Avg FPS | Playable (≥60) |

|---|---|---|

| Low | 100.4 | Yes |

| Medium | 62.8 | Yes |

| High | 46.2 | No |

| Ultra | 32.5 | No |

The breakdown makes the resolution cliffs explicit. Between 1080p and 1440p on Medium, the average drops from 92.1 to 78.5 FPS — a manageable decline. Between 1440p and 4K on the same preset, it falls further to 62.8 FPS, consuming most of the remaining margin. On Low, the game remains above 100 FPS even at 4K, which shows the RTX 4070's underlying throughput (29.15 TFLOPS FP32, 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth) is substantial; it is the heavier presets at high pixel counts that exhaust it. On Ultra, no resolution reaches the threshold — 1080p comes closest at 54.7 FPS, and 4K bottoms out at 32.5 FPS. For a stable 60 FPS experience, the data supports Medium at 4K, Medium at 1440p, or High at 1080p as the clear configuration choices.