The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination produces a peculiar performance profile in The Medium, where the GPU's raw power is frequently held back by the aging CPU. The data shows a system that can play the game, but the frame rates across resolutions and settings reveal a bottleneck that prevents the RTX 5090 from ever reaching its potential. The most striking finding is the narrow performance delta between 1080p and 4K, which points directly to the CPU as the limiting factor in this pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows an unusual scaling pattern that defies typical GPU-bound behavior. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 71.4 FPS at 1920x1080 to 62.7 FPS at 2560x1440, and then to 60.7 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a total drop of only 10.7 FPS from 1080p to 4K, which is remarkably small. In a GPU-bound scenario, the difference between 1080p and 4K would typically be far more substantial, often exceeding 50% performance loss. Here, the 4K result is still 85% of the 1080p result at High settings.

This pattern intensifies at Ultra settings, where the frame rates are 61.1 FPS at 1080p, 61.6 FPS at 1440p, and 48.8 FPS at 4K. The 1440p result is actually slightly higher than the 1080p result, which is a statistical anomaly that further indicates the CPU is the primary constraint. The Ryzen 5 2600, with its 6 cores and 12 threads, appears to be maxing out its capabilities around the 60-70 FPS range in this title, regardless of resolution. The RTX 5090 is so powerful that even at 4K, it is not the component that determines the final frame rate.

The Low settings data reinforces this conclusion. At 1920x1080 Low, the system hits 93.2 FPS. Dropping to 2560x1440 Low yields 87.5 FPS, and at 4K Low, the average is 81.7 FPS. The gap between 1080p and 4K at Low settings is only 11.5 FPS. If the GPU were the bottleneck, reducing resolution would produce a much larger frame rate increase. The data indicates that the game's engine has a per-frame CPU cost that the Ryzen 5 2600 cannot overcome, capping performance even when the GPU has ample headroom.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data clearly indicates that High settings at 2560x1440 is the sweet spot for this combination, delivering 62.7 FPS. This is the only preset and resolution pairing that balances visual fidelity with a frame rate that stays above the 60 FPS threshold. At 4K, High settings drop to 60.7 FPS, which is technically playable but leaves no margin for demanding scenes. The Medium preset at 2560x1440 produces 74 FPS, which is smoother but sacrifices visual quality for a 11.3 FPS gain over High. For players who prefer a higher frame rate buffer, Medium at 1440p is the better choice, but High offers the best overall experience per the measured rows.

The Ultra preset is not recommended for this pairing. It produces 61.1 FPS at 1080p, 61.6 FPS at 1440p, and only 48.8 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is the only sub-60 FPS measurement in the entire dataset, and it is a significant 11.9 FPS drop below the 4K High result. The performance cost of Ultra over High is not justified, as the frame rate drops by 10.3 FPS at 1080p and 13.9 FPS at 4K. The data suggests that Ultra settings push the CPU's rendering thread overhead beyond its capability, causing a disproportionate performance penalty.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 543rd out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the 68th percentile of all tested configurations. The ranking is surprisingly low given the RTX 5090's position as the top-tier GPU in this dataset, which has a percentile rank of 94 among all GPUs. The CPU, however, only ranks in the 77th percentile among all CPUs. The gap between these two percentile scores explains the mediocre combo ranking.

The data indicates that the combo rank is dragged down almost entirely by the CPU. The RTX 5090 is capable of far higher frame rates in this game, as evidenced by its benchmark scores, but the Ryzen 5 2600 cannot feed it enough data. The result is a pairing that performs worse than many combinations with slower GPUs but faster CPUs. The 543rd rank out of 1689 is a direct consequence of this mismatch, showing that the whole system is only as strong as its weakest link, which in this case is the 2018-era CPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates are 93.2 FPS on Low, 78.1 FPS on Medium, 71.4 FPS on High, and 61.1 FPS on Ultra. The spread from Low to Ultra is 32.1 FPS, which shows that the CPU is already limiting the top end, as a GPU-bound system would show a much wider gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p.

At 2560x1440, the results are 87.5 FPS on Low, 74 FPS on Medium, 62.7 FPS on High, and 61.6 FPS on Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra at this resolution is only 1.1 FPS, which is within the margin of error. This suggests that the CPU is the sole determinant of performance at these settings, as the GPU's workload increase from 1080p to 1440p has almost no impact on the final frame rate.

At 3840x2160, the averages are 81.7 FPS on Low, 70.4 FPS on Medium, 60.7 FPS on High, and 48.8 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Ultra result is the only measurement that falls below 60 FPS, indicating that the combined CPU and GPU load at this setting finally overwhelms the system. The drop from High to Ultra at 4K is 11.9 FPS, which is the largest single-setting penalty in the dataset, showing that Ultra settings add a significant load that this CPU cannot handle at high resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is a 5 nm Blackwell 2.0 architecture GPU with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. Its boost clock is 2407 MHz. The GPU has 21,760 shading units and 176 ROPs. With a 94th percentile rank among all GPUs and an average benchmark score of 84306, it is one of the most powerful graphics cards in the database. Its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 D, scores 84241, a delta of only 0.1%, while the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 is 1.3% behind.

In The Medium, the RTX 5090's massive memory bandwidth and 32 GB VRAM are not the limiting factors. The game is not VRAM-constrained at any of the tested settings or resolutions, as the frame rates would not be so consistent across resolutions if the GPU were struggling. The GPU's role in this pairing is to provide a performance ceiling far above what the CPU can deliver. The 4K Low result of 81.7 FPS demonstrates that the GPU is capable of producing high frame rates at 4K, but the CPU prevents it from doing so at higher settings. The GPU is effectively idle waiting for the CPU to deliver draw calls.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is a 2018-era 12 nm processor with 6 cores and 12 threads, base clock of 3.40 GHz and boost clock of 3.90 GHz. It has 16 MB of shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with 46.9 GB/s bandwidth. The CPU's benchmark results show a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 11186 and a single-core score of 1579. Its average benchmark score is 19616, and it ranks in the 77th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-11600KF, has an average score of 19740, a delta of -0.6%.

The data from The Medium shows that the CPU is the primary bottleneck in this pairing. The frame rates at 1080p and 1440p are nearly identical for each settings preset, which is the classic sign of a CPU-limited scenario. The Ryzen 5 2600's single-thread performance, as indicated by its Cinebench R23 single-core score of 1579, is not sufficient to drive the RTX 5090 at higher frame rates. The game appears to have a hard CPU-bound limit around 93 FPS at Low settings, which is the highest measurement in the entire dataset. The CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are not enough to overcome the per-frame engine overhead in this title, and the result is a system that cannot take advantage of the RTX 5090's raw power.

FAQ

*Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combination can achieve in The Medium?*

A: The highest measured average frame rate is 93.2 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 with Low settings.

Q: Is this combination capable of maintaining 60 FPS at 4K?

A: Yes, at 4K with High settings, the average frame rate is 60.7 FPS, which is just above the 60 FPS threshold. However, at 4K Ultra, the average drops to 48.8 FPS.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested combinations in the game?

A: The combination ranks 543rd out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the upper third of all configurations.

Q: Which component is limiting performance in this game?

A: The data indicates the CPU is the limiting factor, as frame rates remain similar across resolutions from 1080p to 4K, showing the GPU is not being fully utilized.

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, High settings produce 62.7 FPS, while Ultra settings produce 61.6 FPS, a difference of only 1.1 FPS.

Q: What is the lowest measured frame rate in the dataset?

A: The lowest average frame rate is 48.8 FPS, which occurs at 3840x2160 with Ultra settings.