The Medium

The Medium is a horror title that stresses both processor and graphics hardware, and this pairing of AMD’s Ryzen 5 5500 with NVIDIA’s RTX 2060 SUPER delivers a playable yet uneven experience depending on resolution and settings. The 6-core, 12-thread CPU, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and boost of 4.20 GHz, sits near the middle of the pack in synthetic tests, ranking in the 79th percentile among all CPUs. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 16429 and single-core score of 2319 indicate solid throughput for a modern game, though the 5500’s PCIe Gen 3 interface and 16 MB of L3 cache can limit headroom in titles that scale aggressively with memory bandwidth. In this game, the CPU’s role is evident at lower settings, where frame rates rise dramatically, suggesting the processor is not the primary bottleneck when graphical load is reduced.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The Ryzen 5 5500 provides 6 cores and 12 threads, a configuration that aligns well with The Medium’s multi-threaded rendering pipeline, which relies on simultaneous workloads for its dual-reality mechanic. With a boost clock of 4.20 GHz and a 65 W TDP, this Zen 3 (Cezanne) chip offers competitive per-core performance, as shown by its Cinebench R20 single-core score of 973 and 3DMark single-thread score of 836. However, its average benchmark score of 20875 places it just 0.1% behind the Intel Core i5-12500 (20897) and 0.2% behind the Intel Core i5-12600T (20917), indicating that it trades blows with mainstream rivals rather than decisively beating them. The CPU’s multi-threaded prowess, reflected in a Passmark multithread score of 19330, ensures that the game’s background streaming and physics calculations do not stall, but the data from measured FPS shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher settings.

When the game runs at Low settings across all resolutions, the CPU has more room to stretch its legs. At 1080p Low, the combo hits 89.4 FPS, which is 3.2% higher than the 86.6 FPS you might expect from a purely GPU-bound scenario, indicating that the 5500 can feed the RTX 2060 SUPER effectively at lower graphical loads. The 3DMark 8-thread score of 4593 and 16-thread score of 5386 suggest that the CPU can handle the game’s parallel tasks without dropping frames, but the 5500’s 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth and dual-channel DDR4 support are modest, which could explain why the frame rate gains from 1440p to 1080p at Low settings (77.9 to 89.4 FPS) are not proportionally larger. The CPU’s nearest rivals, including the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE (20900, -0.1%) and AMD EPYC 7J13 (20845, +0.1%), show that the 5500 is squarely in the mid-range, with no standout advantage that would make it a dominant force in this title.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, built on the Turing architecture with a TU106 chip, brings 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. Its base clock of 1470 MHz and boost clock of 1650 MHz, combined with 2176 shading units and 34 RT cores, make it a capable card for ray-traced effects, though The Medium’s implementation is not heavily reliant on RT. The GPU’s average benchmark score of 19774 places it in the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (19706, 0.3% ahead) and the RTX 2070 (19680, 0.5% ahead), showing that the 2060 SUPER is competitive with older high-end cards but not a clear victor. In The Medium, the GPU’s role is dominant at High and Ultra settings, where the 8 GB VRAM is sufficient for 1080p but becomes strained at 4K, as evidenced by the 4K High average of 24.9 FPS versus 40.6 FPS at 1080p High.

The RTX 2060 SUPER’s FP32 performance of 7.181 TFLOPS and texture rate of 224.4 GTexel/s are adequate for the game’s fixed-camera angles, which reduce geometric complexity but still demand heavy pixel shading. At 4K Ultra, the combo drops to 24 FPS, which is a 30.9% decrease from the 34.7 FPS at 1080p Ultra, indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and compute units are overwhelmed by the higher resolution. The GPU’s Passmark G3D score of 16462 and DirectX 12 score of 61 suggest that it performs well in API-level benchmarks, but in practice, the 2060 SUPER’s 175 W TDP and 12 nm process node limit its ability to maintain high frame rates at 4K, a conclusion reinforced by the fact that Low settings at 4K (62.7 FPS) nearly triple the High settings result.

Settings Recommendations — which preset gives the best experience per the measured rows

Based on the measured FPS data, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience at 1080p, delivering 55.8 FPS, which is above the 40.6 FPS of High and well below the 89.4 FPS of Low, but with significantly better visual fidelity than Low. At 1440p, Medium drops to 45.9 FPS, which is still playable, while High at 34.6 FPS approaches the threshold where responsiveness suffers. For players prioritizing smoothness, Low at 1080p (89.4 FPS) or 1440p (77.9 FPS) provides headroom, but the visual compromise is steep given the game’s atmospheric lighting and shadow work. The Ultra preset is not recommended, as it yields only 34.7 FPS at 1080p and 28.8 FPS at 1440p, which are marginal for a horror title where timing matters. The data shows that Medium at 1080p is the sweet spot, as it maintains over 55 FPS while keeping the GPU’s load reasonable, and it scales predictably to 1440p with a 17.7% drop (55.8 to 45.9 FPS), suggesting that the settings are well optimized for this hardware pairing.

At 4K, no preset is truly ideal, but Low (62.7 FPS) is the only playable option, while Medium (36.7 FPS) and High (24.9 FPS) are too slow for consistent gameplay. The step from Medium to High at 4K costs 11.8 FPS (36.7 to 24.9), a 32.2% reduction, which is disproportionate to the visual gains, indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth is the limiting factor at this resolution. Therefore, the recommendation is to use Medium at 1080p or 1440p for a stable experience, and to reserve Low for 4K if resolution is non-negotiable.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

This specific combination of the Ryzen 5 5500 and RTX 2060 SUPER ranks 1209 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 71st percentile of all configurations. This rank is lower than the individual percentiles of the CPU (79th) and GPU (63rd), suggesting that the pairing does not synergize perfectly in this title, likely due to the CPU’s PCIe Gen 3 interface and the GPU’s mid-range compute capabilities. The combo’s position indicates that it outperforms roughly 28% of tested systems, but it is far from the top tier, and the measured FPS data confirms that it struggles at 4K Ultra, where it falls below the 30 FPS threshold. Compared to other combinations, the 5500’s nearest CPU rivals, such as the i5-12500 and Ryzen 5 PRO 4655GE, would likely achieve better frame rates with the same GPU, given their slightly higher average scores, but the difference is minimal at under 0.2%. The GPU’s nearest rivals, including the GTX TITAN and RTX 2070, also show negligible deltas, meaning that this combo’s ranking is more influenced by the game’s specific demands than by raw component strength.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The FPS scaling across resolutions reveals a clear pattern of GPU limitation at higher settings and CPU limitation at lower settings. At Low, the frame rate drops from 89.4 FPS at 1080p to 77.9 FPS at 1440p (a 12.9% reduction) and then to 62.7 FPS at 4K (a 19.5% reduction from 1440p), which is a relatively gentle slope, indicating that the CPU is keeping pace and the GPU’s fill rate is the primary constraint. In contrast, at High, the drop is steeper: 40.6 FPS at 1080p falls to 34.6 FPS at 1440p (a 14.8% reduction) and then to 24.9 FPS at 4K (a 28.0% reduction from 1440p), showing that the GPU’s memory bandwidth (448.0 GB/s) and 8 GB VRAM are saturated at higher resolutions. The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic scaling, with 34.7 FPS at 1080p dropping to 28.8 FPS at 1440p (a 17.0% reduction) and 24 FPS at 4K (a 16.7% reduction from 1440p), which suggests that the GPU is consistently the bottleneck, as the CPU’s multi-threaded scores do not degrade with resolution.

The fact that 1080p Low (89.4 FPS) is nearly double 1080p Medium (55.8 FPS) indicates that the GPU’s shading units and texture units are the limiting factor, not the CPU’s 6 cores. At 4K, the gap between Low and Medium is 26.0 FPS (62.7 to 36.7), and between Medium and High is 11.8 FPS (36.7 to 24.9), which highlights how the GPU’s 7.181 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 105.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are insufficient for the game’s high-resolution rendering. The data strongly suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER is the limiting component in this combo, as the CPU’s benchmark scores remain competitive with rivals, while the GPU’s percentile rank (63rd) is notably lower, and the FPS scaling pattern aligns with GPU-bound behavior. For users targeting 4K, this combo is only viable at Low settings, while 1440p Medium (45.9 FPS) and 1080p Medium (55.8 FPS) represent the practical ceiling for this hardware.