The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine 4, presents a unique stress profile for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER combination. The measured data reveals a system that is heavily GPU-bound at higher resolutions but exhibits a notable performance ceiling at 1080p, suggesting that the CPU's capabilities are a significant factor in the lower-resolution results. The benchmark results indicate a clear hierarchy of performance scaling that shifts the bottleneck depending on the target resolution and quality preset.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 shows a textbook GPU-bound scenario, though the degree of scaling is heavily influenced by the graphics preset. At the "Low" setting, the transition from 1080p to 4K results in a drop from 117 FPS to 102 FPS, a modest 12.8% reduction. This relatively small penalty suggests that at "Low" settings, the game is not fully utilizing the GPU's capabilities, and the 117 FPS figure at 1080p is likely constrained by the CPU's single-thread performance or the game's engine logic rather than the graphics card.

The scaling becomes much more aggressive when moving to higher quality presets. At "Medium" settings, the frame rate falls from 98 FPS at 1080p to 69 FPS at 4K, a 29.6% decrease. The gap widens further at "High" settings, where the 1080p score of 75 FPS drops to 49 FPS at 4K, representing a 34.7% reduction. The most extreme scaling occurs at the "Ultra" preset, which sees performance plummet from 59 FPS at 1080p to just 39 FPS at 4K, a 33.9% drop that leaves the game struggling to maintain smooth playback at the highest resolution.

The data suggests that the RTX 4070 SUPER is the primary limiting component at 4K with higher presets, as the pixel throughput requirements of the Ada Lovelace architecture are fully taxed. However, the relatively small delta between 1080p and 1440p at "Low" settings (117 FPS to 111 FPS) indicates that the CPU is holding back performance at lower resolutions. The 4K "Low" result of 102 FPS being only 12.8% lower than the 1080p "Low" result is a strong indicator that the Ryzen 5 5600F's six cores are reaching their limit around the 110-120 FPS range in this title, regardless of the resolution.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, provides a substantial 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is sufficient for The Medium's demands, as the game does not appear to exceed the VRAM capacity at any tested setting, given the consistent frame rate progression across resolutions. The GPU's 56 RT cores and 224 Tensor cores are part of the Ada Lovelace architecture, but the measured data does not isolate ray tracing performance; the results reflect standard rasterization.

The GPU's clock speeds, with a base of 1980 MHz and a boost of 2475 MHz, are relatively high for the 40-series lineup. The benchmark results indicate that the card is capable of delivering 117 FPS at 1080p "Low" and 111 FPS at 1440p "Low," which suggests that the GPU is not the bottleneck at these settings. However, the 4K "Ultra" result of 39 FPS demonstrates that the card's 35.48 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is insufficient to maintain high frame rates at the most demanding configuration.

The transition from "High" to "Ultra" at 1440p shows a drop from 63 FPS to 50 FPS, a 20.6% performance hit. This indicates that the "Ultra" preset likely introduces additional rendering features that are particularly taxing on the GPU's shading units and ROPs. The GPU's 80 ROPs and 224 TMUs are fully utilized at these settings, and the 198.0 GPixel/s pixel rate becomes a limiting factor for the 3840x2160 resolution.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the "Medium" preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all resolutions. At 1080p, the "Medium" setting achieves 98 FPS with a minimum of 83 FPS and a maximum of 112 FPS, providing a smooth experience well above the 60 FPS threshold. Moving to 1440p, "Medium" delivers 88 FPS with a minimum of 75 FPS, which remains highly playable and offers a significant resolution upgrade over 1080p without a major frame rate penalty.

The "High" preset is viable at 1080p with 75 FPS, but the 1440p result of 63 FPS is approaching the lower boundary of what is acceptable for a horror game that benefits from smooth camera panning. At 4K, the "Medium" setting produces 69 FPS, which is playable, but the "High" setting at 49 FPS is not recommended for a consistent experience. The "Ultra" preset is only suitable for 1080p at 59 FPS, which is borderline, and should be avoided at 1440p and above due to the 50 FPS and 39 FPS results.

The data suggests that players with a 1440p monitor should select "Medium" for the best experience, as the 88 FPS average is close to the 1080p "High" result and provides a sharper image. For 4K displays, "Medium" is the only viable option that maintains a frame rate above 60 FPS, though users may need to accept occasional dips to 59 FPS based on the minimum recorded. The "Low" preset is not recommended for quality purposes, as it likely disables many visual features that contribute to the game's atmosphere, despite achieving 117 FPS at 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER ranks 568th out of 2911 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the top 19.5% of all systems benchmarked. This is a solid result that reflects the hardware's capability in this specific title, though it is not at the very top tier. The CPU's percentile of 85 versus all CPUs indicates that the Ryzen 5 5600F is a strong processor, but the GPU's percentile of 83 versus all GPUs suggests that the graphics card is slightly less dominant in the overall hierarchy.

The ranking position suggests that there are many combinations with more powerful GPUs or CPUs that achieve higher frame rates in this game. The RTX 4070 SUPER's nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB and the GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile, have similar average benchmark scores, indicating that the card is positioned in a competitive segment. However, the measured FPS in The Medium shows that the card is capable of delivering playable frame rates at most settings, and the 568th rank out of 2911 confirms its overall capability.

The CPU's nearest rivals, including the Intel Core Ultra 5 225 and AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D, have nearly identical average benchmark scores with deltas of 0% and -0.2% respectively. This suggests that the Ryzen 5 5600F's performance is well-matched to its peers, and the combination's rank is likely more influenced by the GPU's performance than the CPU's. The fact that the combo ranks in the top 20% of all tested systems is a positive indicator, but it also shows that there is headroom for improvement with a more powerful GPU.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600F, based on the Zen 3 architecture with the Vermeer codename, provides six cores and twelve threads with a base clock of 3.00 GHz and a boost clock of 4.00 GHz. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache is a significant asset for gaming workloads, and the 7 nm process node from TSMC helps maintain efficiency with a 65 W TDP. The CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 2872 and multithread score of 19236 place it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, indicating strong performance for a mid-range processor.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. The 1080p "Low" result of 117 FPS and the 1440p "Low" result of 111 FPS suggest that the CPU is reaching its limit around this frame rate range. The fact that the 4K "Low" result is 102 FPS, only 12.8% lower than the 1080p result, indicates that the GPU is not the limiting factor at these settings; instead, the CPU's six cores are struggling to feed the GPU with enough draw calls and game logic updates.

The CPU's architecture, with 512 KB of L2 cache per core and 64 KB of L1 cache per core, is well-suited for the game's fixed-camera perspectives, which often require rapid scene changes. The 4.00 GHz boost clock is modest by modern standards, but the Zen 3 architecture's IPC improvements help mitigate this. The data shows that the CPU can sustain frame rates in the 100-120 FPS range, but it cannot push beyond this threshold, which is a limitation for high-refresh-rate displays at 1080p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured frame rates show a clear progression from "Low" to "Ultra." The "Low" preset achieves 117 FPS, while "Medium" reaches 98 FPS with a minimum of 83 FPS and a maximum of 112 FPS. The "High" preset drops to 75 FPS, and "Ultra" falls to 59 FPS. The 1080p results indicate that the CPU is the bottleneck at "Low" and "Medium," as the frame rates do not scale proportionally with the GPU's capabilities.

Moving to 2560x1440, the "Low" preset delivers 111 FPS, which is only 5.1% lower than the 1080p result, further confirming the CPU limit. The "Medium" preset achieves 88 FPS with a minimum of 75 FPS and a maximum of 101 FPS, providing a smooth experience. The "High" preset drops to 63 FPS, and "Ultra" falls to 50 FPS. The 1440p results show a more balanced load between CPU and GPU, with the "Medium" preset being the sweet spot.

At 3840x2160, the "Low" preset produces 102 FPS, which is still above the 60 FPS threshold and indicates that the CPU is still the limiting factor even at 4K with minimal settings. The "Medium" preset achieves 69 FPS with a minimum of 59 FPS and a maximum of 79 FPS, making it the only 4K setting that maintains playable frame rates. The "High" preset drops to 49 FPS, and "Ultra" falls to 39 FPS, both of which are below the ideal range for a smooth experience. The 4K results clearly show the GPU becoming the primary bottleneck at higher quality settings, with the RTX 4070 SUPER's 12 GB of VRAM and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth being insufficient to maintain high frame rates at the most demanding presets.