The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding rendering workload that scales sharply with both resolution and quality presets. This analysis examines the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti combination, using measured data to isolate the roles of the CPU and GPU across the tested spectrum.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep decline as resolution increases, indicating a GPU-bound scenario at higher pixel counts. At 1080p Ultra, the combo produces 54.9 FPS, while moving to 1440p Ultra drops the average to 46 FPS, a reduction of roughly 16%. The most severe scaling occurs at 4K Ultra, where the average falls to 32.6 FPS — only 59% of the 1080p Ultra result. This pattern is consistent across all settings: the gap between 1080p and 4K widens as quality increases, with the largest absolute delta at the Ultra preset.

The limiting component shifts based on resolution. At 1080p, the frame rates are high enough that the CPU’s six cores and twelve threads can keep up, but the GPU still dominates the workload. The data shows that dropping from 1080p to 1440p at High settings reduces FPS from 65.5 to 54.7, a 16.5% decline, while the same resolution change at Low settings only costs 6.2% (127.3 to 119.4 FPS). This suggests that at Low settings, the system becomes less dependent on GPU fill rate, but at higher presets, the RTX 3080 Ti’s compute and memory bandwidth are the primary constraints.

At 4K, the picture is unambiguous. The RTX 3080 Ti, with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory and 912.4 GB/s bandwidth, is pushed to its limits. The 4K High average of 44 FPS and 4K Ultra average of 32.6 FPS indicate that even a high-end GPU cannot maintain smooth frame rates at this resolution with maximum quality. The scaling from 1440p to 4K at Medium settings (75.7 to 62.7 FPS, a 17.2% drop) reinforces that the GPU is the bottleneck, as the CPU workload does not increase proportionally with pixel count.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a six-core, twelve-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, with a base clock of 3.60 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. Its 16 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support (51.2 GB/s bandwidth) are adequate for gaming, but the data indicates that in The Medium, the CPU is not the primary constraint at any tested resolution.

The CPU’s benchmark scores provide context. In Cinebench R23, it scores 16,429 multi-core and 2,319 single-core. The 3DMark results show a single-thread score of 836 and a 16-thread score of 5,386. These figures place the CPU in the 79th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 20,875. Its nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12500, scores 20,897, a delta of -0.1%, meaning the Ryzen 5 5500 is effectively tied with that chip in synthetic tests.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 127.3 FPS, which is the highest measured result. This suggests that the CPU can sustain frame rates above 120 FPS in less demanding scenarios. However, at 1080p Ultra, the FPS drops to 54.9, indicating that the GPU’s rendering load, not CPU throughput, limits performance. The CPU’s 12 threads are sufficient for the game’s multithreaded workload, as evidenced by the fact that frame rates scale almost entirely with GPU-affecting settings rather than resolution alone.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 5500 and RTX 3080 Ti ranks 484th out of 1,689 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the top 28.7% of all configurations. This rank reflects the balance between a mid-range CPU and a high-end GPU. The RTX 3080 Ti sits in the 83rd percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU is in the 79th percentile, so the combo’s rank is slightly lower than either component’s individual standing, suggesting that the pairing does not fully leverage the GPU’s potential in this specific game.

The GPU’s nearest rivals include the RTX 3090 with an average score of 41,441 (a delta of -0.5% compared to the RTX 3080 Ti’s 41,224), and the RTX 5070 at 41,687 (a delta of -1.1%). These differences are small, indicating that the RTX 3080 Ti performs within a few percentage points of these cards in synthetic benchmarks. The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-12500, scores 20,897, just 0.1% higher than the Ryzen 5 5500.

The combo’s rank of 484 suggests that many configurations with faster CPUs achieve higher frame rates in The Medium, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU overhead matters more. The data shows that at 1080p, the combo’s FPS is respectable but not exceptional, and at 4K, the GPU becomes the clear limiter, meaning the CPU’s rank becomes less relevant.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four quality settings, providing a complete picture of performance.

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows:

• Low: 127.3 FPS
• Medium: 93.4 FPS
• High: 65.5 FPS
• Ultra: 54.9 FPS

The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 56.9% reduction in FPS, with the largest single drop occurring between Medium and High (27.9 FPS). This suggests that the High preset introduces significant rendering effects that tax the GPU.

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 119.4 FPS
• Medium: 75.7 FPS
• High: 54.7 FPS
• Ultra: 46 FPS

The 1440p results show a similar pattern, with a 61.5% reduction from Low to Ultra. The gap between High and Ultra narrows to 8.7 FPS, indicating diminishing returns from the Ultra preset at this resolution.

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 101.6 FPS
• Medium: 62.7 FPS
• High: 44 FPS
• Ultra: 32.6 FPS

The 4K results show the steepest scaling, with a 67.9% reduction from Low to Ultra. The drop from Medium to High is 18.7 FPS, the largest single-step decline across all resolutions, highlighting the GPU’s struggle with high-quality effects at 4K.

The data shows that the combo can achieve playable frame rates at 1080p and 1440p across all settings, but at 4K, only the Low preset exceeds 100 FPS. The 4K Ultra result of 32.6 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that users must reduce settings to achieve smooth gameplay at this resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is a high-end Ampere architecture GPU with 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. It features 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores, with a boost clock of 1665 MHz and a base clock of 1365 MHz. The 12 GB of GDDR6X memory operates at 19 Gbps effective, delivering 912.4 GB/s of bandwidth over a 384-bit bus.

In The Medium, the GPU’s role is paramount. The measured FPS scaling directly correlates with the GPU’s capabilities. At 1080p, the GPU can deliver up to 127.3 FPS at Low settings, but the Ultra preset drops to 54.9 FPS, showing that the game’s high-quality effects require substantial GPU compute. The RTX 3080 Ti’s FP32 performance of 34.10 TFLOPS and texture rate of 532.8 GTexel/s are sufficient for 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K, the pixel rate of 186.5 GPixel/s becomes a limiting factor.

The GPU’s benchmark results reinforce its positioning. It scores 26,896 in Passmark G3D and 19,1309 in Geekbench OpenCL. Its percentile rank of 83 places it above the majority of GPUs, and its average benchmark score of 41,224 is close to the RTX 3090’s 41,441. The VRAM capacity of 12 GB is sufficient for The Medium at 4K Ultra, as the game does not appear to exceed this limit, but the GPU’s raw compute power is the deciding factor.

The data suggests that the RTX 3080 Ti is the dominant component in this combo. At 4K, the CPU’s influence is minimal, as evidenced by the fact that frame rates scale predictably with GPU-affecting settings. The GPU’s 80 RT cores are relevant for any ray-traced effects, though the measured data does not isolate this variable. The 350 W TDP and suggested 750 W PSU indicate that this is a power-hungry card, but the benchmark results show that it delivers correspondingly high performance in this horror title.