The Medium

The Medium presents an unusual scaling profile for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination, with performance deltas that reveal a significant bottleneck shift as resolution climbs. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo reaches 136.6 FPS, but this drops to 128.7 FPS at 1440p and further to 119.7 FPS at 4K. This modest 12.4% decline from 1080p to 4K at Low settings indicates that the CPU is heavily limiting the frame rate at lower resolutions, preventing the RTX 4090 from fully stretching its legs. The picture changes dramatically when moving to High settings: 1080p yields 95.5 FPS, 1440p drops to 82.6 FPS, and 4K falls to 63.1 FPS. That represents a 33.9% reduction from 1080p to 4K, showing that the GPU begins to take on a more substantial role as visual fidelity increases.

The Ultra preset tells an even more revealing story. At 1080p Ultra, the combo manages 77.3 FPS, while 1440p Ultra produces 62.6 FPS, and 4K Ultra tumbles to 49.8 FPS. The 35.6% drop from 1080p to 4K at Ultra settings confirms that the RTX 4090 is the primary constraint at the highest quality levels, though the absolute frame rates remain playable. Interestingly, the scaling between Medium and High at each resolution is relatively tight, with Medium at 1080p hitting 115.1 FPS versus 95.5 FPS at High, suggesting that the game's medium preset is far less demanding than its high preset. The data indicates that this combination is capable of smooth 4K performance only at Low settings, while 1440p High offers a strong balance of visual quality and frame rate.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is a dominant force in this pairing, but its capabilities are only partially utilized depending on the workload. The card is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process node from TSMC, housing 76,300 million transistors on a 609 mm² die. Its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory runs across a 384-bit bus, delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which is ample for the demands of The Medium's dual-world rendering. The GPU operates with a base clock of 2235 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These specifications position the RTX 4090 at the 91st percentile among all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 66,473.

The benchmark results show that the RTX 4090's raw compute power is often held back by the Ryzen 5 5600. At 4K Low, the combo achieves 119.7 FPS, which is only 12.4% lower than the 1080p Low result of 136.6 FPS. This relatively small gap suggests that even at 4K, the CPU is still keeping the GPU from reaching its full potential. However, when the settings are pushed to Ultra, the 4K frame rate of 49.8 FPS represents a 35.6% drop from 1080p, indicating that the GPU's shading units, texture mapping units, and ray tracing cores are being fully exercised. The RTX 4090's 16,384 shading units and 512 texture mapping units are clearly capable of handling The Medium's visual effects, but the system's overall performance is a product of both components working in tandem.

The GPU's nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (average score 66,733, delta -0.4%), the NVIDIA Tesla P40 (66,127, delta 0.5%), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (67,097, delta -0.9%). These comparisons highlight that the RTX 4090 sits in a performance tier that is statistically indistinguishable from these professional-grade cards, though the gaming-oriented features and memory configuration of the 4090 make it more suitable for this title. The GPU's 82.58 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 82.58 TFLOPS of FP16 performance (1:1 ratio) provide substantial compute headroom, yet the measured frame rates in The Medium suggest that the game's engine does not always scale perfectly with this level of hardware.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 1,689 tested combinations in the database, this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 92. This places it in the top 5.5% of all tested systems, which is an exceptional result for a CPU that was released at a $199 launch MSRP. The ranking reflects the RTX 4090's dominance as the primary driver of performance, as the GPU alone sits at the 91st percentile among all GPUs. The CPU, by comparison, holds the 79th percentile among all CPUs, which means the combination's overall rank is elevated by the GPU's strength rather than the processor's.

The 92nd rank out of 1,689 combos means that only 91 other pairings deliver higher frame rates in The Medium. This is particularly notable because the Ryzen 5 5600 is a mid-range desktop processor with 6 cores and 12 threads, while the RTX 4090 is the flagship consumer GPU of its generation. The data suggests that this combination is capable of outperforming systems with more expensive CPUs when paired with lesser GPUs, thanks to the 4090's immense computational resources. However, the rank also implies that there is room for improvement: pairing the RTX 4090 with a higher-tier CPU would likely push the combo higher in the rankings, as the CPU becomes a more significant bottleneck at lower resolutions.

The measured FPS results across all settings and resolutions confirm that this combo is well-suited for high-refresh-rate 1080p and 1440p gaming, with 4K performance being playable at medium settings or lower. The combo's rank of 92 out of 1,689 is a strong endorsement of its overall capability, but it also underscores the importance of CPU selection when building around a flagship GPU. For users targeting 4K Ultra, the 49.8 FPS result is borderline, while 1440p High at 82.6 FPS offers a more comfortable experience. The ranking data indicates that this combination is a high-performance pairing that excels in most scenarios, though it does not fully unlock the RTX 4090's potential in CPU-bound situations.

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate at 4K with High settings in The Medium?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and RTX 4090 combination produces an average of 63.1 FPS at 3840x2160 with High settings.

Q: How does the combo's ranking in The Medium compare to other tested systems?

A: This pairing ranks 92nd out of 1,689 total combinations, placing it in the top 5.5% of all tested systems for this game.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K at Ultra settings?

A: At Ultra settings, the combo achieves 77.3 FPS at 1080p but drops to 49.8 FPS at 4K, representing a 35.6% reduction in performance.

Q: Does the RTX 4090's memory bandwidth influence performance in this game?

A: The GPU's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 384-bit bus delivers 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth, which provides ample data throughput for The Medium's dual-world rendering effects.

Q: What is the CPU's benchmark percentile compared to the GPU's?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600 sits at the 79th percentile among all CPUs, while the RTX 4090 holds the 91st percentile among all GPUs, indicating the GPU is the stronger component in this pairing.

Q: How much faster is 1080p Low compared to 4K Low?

A: At Low settings, the combo hits 136.6 FPS at 1080p versus 119.7 FPS at 4K, a difference of 16.9 FPS or approximately 12.4%.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer, and manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process node. It operates with a base clock of 3.50 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP and support for DDR4 memory in a dual-channel configuration. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache, providing a total of 4,150 million transistors on a 74 mm² die. Its memory bandwidth is rated at 51.2 GB/s, and it supports PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes from the CPU itself. The processor's launch MSRP was $199, and it holds the 79th percentile among all CPUs in the database.

Benchmark results for the Ryzen 5 5600 show strong single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. In Cinebench R23, it scores 18,309 in multi-core and 2,584 in single-core, while in 3DMark, it achieves 5,659 in the max-threads test and 882 in the single-thread test. The PassMark multi-thread score is 21,541, with a single-thread score of 3,256. These numbers indicate that the CPU is capable of feeding the RTX 4090 with data, but it becomes a bottleneck at lower resolutions where the GPU is less stressed. The nearest CPU rivals include the Intel Xeon D-1746TER (average score 21,635, delta 0.6%), the AMD EPYC 9554P (21,899, delta -0.6%), and the AMD EPYC 9534 (21,900, delta -0.6%), all of which have similar average benchmark scores.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p Low, where the frame rate of 136.6 FPS is only 12.4% higher than the 4K Low result of 119.7 FPS. This suggests that the CPU is limiting performance even at 4K with low visual settings, as the GPU could theoretically render more frames if the processor could supply them faster. The situation improves at higher settings, where the GPU's workload increases and the CPU has more time to prepare frames. At 4K Ultra, the 49.8 FPS result indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the CPU has sufficient headroom to support the graphical demands. The data shows that for users prioritizing high frame rates at 1080p or 1440p, the Ryzen 5 5600 may hold back the RTX 4090, but for 4K gaming, the combination is well-balanced.