The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination ranks 428th out of 1,689 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the top quartile of all systems benchmarked. This is a strong position for a pairing that pairs a 2019-era six-core CPU with a 2024 flagship-tier GPU, and the data suggests the graphics card is doing the heavy lifting in this horror title. The combo’s percentile placement indicates it outpaces the majority of tested systems, though it does not crack the top tier where newer, higher-end CPUs would typically pair with this GPU.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 428 out of 1,689 systems places it comfortably above the median, but the gap to the top is significant. The CPU, AMD Ryzen 5 3600, sits at the 76th percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 18,129. Its nearest rivals in synthetic testing are the Intel Core i5-11400 (average score 18,150, a negligible -0.1% delta), the AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS (18,101, +0.2% delta), the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (18,158, -0.2% delta), and the AMD EPYC 9274F (18,189, -0.3% delta). These margins are razor-thin, showing the 3600 is locked in a tight cluster of mid-range performers. In The Medium specifically, that CPU performance is sufficient to feed the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, which itself ranks at the 86th percentile among all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 48,704. The GPU’s nearest rivals—the NVIDIA CMP 50HX (49,071, -0.7% delta), NVIDIA RTX A2000 (47,915, +1.6% delta), NVIDIA RTX A1000 Mobile (47,743, +2.0% delta), and Intel Arc A550M (49,737, -2.1% delta)—are all close, but the 4070 Ti SUPER’s higher percentile reflects its broader capability. The data shows this combo is balanced, but the CPU’s age is the limiting factor; a stronger processor would likely push the rank higher.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows reveal a clear hierarchy across presets, and the sweet spot for this combo is the Medium preset. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 91.8 FPS, which is a substantial jump from High’s 78.3 FPS and only a modest drop from Low’s 109.5 FPS. The visual quality gain from Medium over Low is typically significant in a game like this, while the performance cost is acceptable. At 2560x1440, Medium yields 83.6 FPS, still comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth play, and it beats High’s 66.6 FPS by a wide margin. Even at 3840x2160, Medium holds at 75.8 FPS, which is playable on many displays, though High drops to 50.8 FPS and Ultra falls to 40.3 FPS. The Ultra preset is the outlier; it pushes the system hard, producing 61.5 FPS at 1080p, 55.7 FPS at 1440p, and only 40.3 FPS at 4K. Given these numbers, Medium is the recommended preset for a balanced experience across all resolutions, as it maintains high frame rates without the steep penalties of Ultra. Low settings are viable for competitive or high-refresh-rate play, especially at 1080p where it hits 109.5 FPS, but the visual compromise is unnecessary for most users.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K shows a predictable decline, but the pattern reveals where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the drop from 1920x1080 (109.5 FPS) to 2560x1440 (101.5 FPS) is relatively mild at 8 FPS, and the further drop to 3840x2160 (90.9 FPS) is another 10.6 FPS. This gentle slope indicates the GPU is not fully taxed at lower resolutions, and the CPU is likely holding back performance. At Medium settings, the progression is 91.8 FPS at 1080p, 83.6 FPS at 1440p, and 75.8 FPS at 4K—a steady, linear decline that suggests the workload scales smoothly with pixel count. High settings show a steeper curve: 78.3 FPS, 66.6 FPS, and 50.8 FPS, respectively, with the 4K figure representing a 35% drop from 1080p. Ultra is the harshest, going from 61.5 FPS at 1080p to 55.7 FPS at 1440p and crashing to 40.3 FPS at 4K. The data indicates that at Low and Medium presets, the CPU is the limiting component at 1080p, as the FPS does not scale up as much as the GPU’s raw power would allow. At High and Ultra, the GPU becomes the primary constraint, especially at 4K where the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER’s 16 GB frame buffer and 672.3 GB/s bandwidth are stretched by the game’s demanding effects.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 109.5 FPS on Low, 91.8 FPS on Medium, 78.3 FPS on High, and 61.5 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a clear 48 FPS spread from Low to Ultra, with each preset step costing roughly 15-16 FPS. The 1080p results are strong across the board, with even Ultra staying above 60 FPS, making this resolution ideal for high-refresh-rate monitors if settings are dropped. At 2560x1440, the figures are 101.5 FPS (Low), 83.6 FPS (Medium), 66.6 FPS (High), and 55.7 FPS (Ultra). The 1440p results show a similar pattern, but Ultra dips below 60 FPS for the first time, indicating that this preset is too demanding for a locked 60 FPS experience at this resolution. At 3840x2160, the performance falls to 90.9 FPS (Low), 75.8 FPS (Medium), 50.8 FPS (High), and 40.3 FPS (Ultra). The 4K numbers are telling: Low and Medium remain playable, but High and Ultra are not, with Ultra producing less than half the FPS of Low. The data shows that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is capable at 4K, but only if the user is willing to compromise on settings. The overall pattern across all resolutions is that Medium offers the best balance of visual fidelity and performance, while Ultra is for screenshots, not gameplay, given the steep FPS cost.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain the measured results. It features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 672.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for The Medium’s high-resolution textures and effects. The GPU’s base clock is 2340 MHz with a boost clock of 2610 MHz, and it has 8,448 shading units, 264 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. Its pixel rate is 250.6 GPixel/s and texture rate is 689.0 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance at 44.10 TFLOPS. These specs place it well above the CPU’s capabilities, and the benchmark data confirms this imbalance. At 1080p Low, the FPS is 109.5, but the GPU is not the bottleneck; the Ryzen 5 3600’s single-thread performance (a 3DMark single-thread score of 696) limits the frame rate. As resolution increases, the GPU’s workload grows, and by 4K Ultra, the 40.3 FPS result is purely GPU-bound. The card’s 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 48,704 show it is a high-end part, but its nearest rivals in synthetic tests—all within a -2.1% to +2.0% delta—indicate it is not the absolute fastest. The GPU’s 16 GB VRAM is a key asset for this game, as The Medium’s dual-world rendering can be memory-hungry at higher settings, and the data shows that High and Ultra at 4K (50.8 and 40.3 FPS) are constrained by raw compute rather than memory capacity.