The Medium

The Medium presents one of the most demanding scenarios in the benchmark database for this particular pairing. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and AMD Radeon RX 580 combination lands at rank 3707 out of 3724 tested combos, placing it in the bottom fraction of all systems tested with this game. The data indicates a severe performance deficit that renders the game essentially unplayable at every resolution above 1080p Low, and even at the most optimized settings, the frame rates barely approach playability. This is a case where the hardware is fundamentally mismatched with the game's engine demands.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling behavior is stark, revealing a system that is completely overwhelmed by the game's rendering load. At 1080p Low, the combo produces an average of 46 FPS, which is the only configuration in the entire measured set that exceeds 30 FPS. Moving to 1440p Low drops the average to 29 FPS, a reduction of 17 FPS or roughly 37% lower than the 1080p result. At 4K Low, the average craters to 15 FPS, which is less than one-third of the 1080p Low figure.

The scaling pattern across settings at each resolution confirms that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, but the CPU is also struggling. At 1080p, the difference between Low (46 FPS) and Medium (29 FPS) is 17 FPS, while the jump from Medium to High (19 FPS) costs another 10 FPS. The Ultra setting at 1080p yields only 12 FPS. This steep drop-off with each settings tier indicates that the renderer's quality presets impose massive incremental costs that this hardware cannot absorb.

At 1440p, the same settings progression shows 29 FPS Low, 18 FPS Medium, 12 FPS High, and 8 FPS Ultra. The 4K results are even more extreme: 15 FPS Low, 10 FPS Medium, 6 FPS High, and 4 FPS Ultra. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Low settings shows a 31 FPS collapse, which is a 67% reduction in performance. This is a classic sign of a GPU that is running out of memory bandwidth and raw shading capacity, but the fact that even 1080p Medium cannot hold 30 FPS suggests the CPU is also limiting the minimum frame rate potential.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranking is damning. With a rank of 3707 out of 3724 combos, this system sits in the 0.5th percentile of tested configurations for this game. Only 17 other combinations performed worse. This is not a matter of tweaking settings; the fundamental hardware capability is insufficient for The Medium's requirements.

The CPU's overall benchmark percentile is 74, meaning the Ryzen 5 5600G outperforms 74% of all tested CPUs in general compute tasks. However, this general strength does not translate to gaming performance in this title. The GPU's percentile is 53, placing it just above the median for all GPUs, but its average benchmark score of 12928 is only 0.1% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile and 0.4% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER. These are mobile and older desktop parts, respectively, and none of them are capable of running The Medium at high frame rates.

The combination of a strong CPU (74th percentile) with a mid-pack GPU (53rd percentile) produces a bottom-0.5% result for this specific game. This suggests that The Medium's engine has some unusual characteristic that punishes this particular hardware pairing far more than typical titles. The measured FPS data supports this: even at 1080p Low, the 46 FPS average is far below what the CPU and GPU's synthetic scores would suggest.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne codename) built on a 7 nm TSMC process. It has a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. The CPU's cache configuration includes 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and a 16 MB L3 cache. It supports DDR4 memory with dual-channel configuration and a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s.

In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU delivers strong results: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 10551 and a single-core score of 1409, plus a Geekbench multi-core score of 8428 and single-core score of 1801. Its 3DMark scores scale from 872 single-thread to 5455 max threads, showing reasonable scaling across core counts. The PassMark multi-thread score is 19717 with a single-thread score of 3177.

Despite these respectable numbers, the CPU's role in The Medium appears to be a secondary bottleneck. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (46 FPS) is far below what the CPU could theoretically deliver if the GPU were not limiting. The fact that the frame rate drops to 29 FPS at 1440p Low and 15 FPS at 4K Low, while the CPU workload should remain relatively constant, proves that the GPU is the dominant constraint. However, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads may struggle with the game's background loading and streaming systems, which could contribute to the low minimum frame rates seen at Medium settings (25 FPS minimum at 1080p Medium).

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS data paints a clear picture of unplayability at most settings. At 1080p, the results are: Low 46 FPS, Medium 29 FPS (with minimum 25 FPS and maximum 33 FPS), High 19 FPS, and Ultra 12 FPS. Only the Low setting achieves a playable average, and even that is borderline.

At 1440p, the numbers drop further: Low 29 FPS, Medium 18 FPS (minimum 15 FPS, maximum 21 FPS), High 12 FPS, and Ultra 8 FPS. The Medium setting's minimum of 15 FPS indicates significant frame time spikes that would make the game feel stuttery.

At 4K, the results are catastrophic: Low 15 FPS, Medium 10 FPS (minimum 8 FPS, maximum 11 FPS), High 6 FPS, and Ultra 4 FPS. The 8 FPS minimum at 4K Medium confirms that the game drops to near-slideshow levels during demanding scenes.

The only settings combination that approaches playability is 1080p Low at 46 FPS. Every other configuration falls below 30 FPS, with the majority well below 20 FPS. The data shows a linear relationship between resolution and frame rate at each settings tier, with 4K performance being roughly one-third of 1080p performance at the same settings level.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is based on the Polaris 20 chip using GCN 4.0 architecture on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process. It has 2304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 32 raster operation units. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1257 MHz and a boost clock of 1340 MHz, with memory clocked at 2000 MHz (8 Gbps effective). The 8 GB of GDDR5 memory sits on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 256.0 GB/s.

The GPU's compute capabilities include a pixel rate of 42.88 GPixel/s, a texture rate of 193.0 GTexel/s, and an FP32 throughput of 6.175 TFLOPS. Its TDP is 185 W with a suggested PSU of 450 W, and it connects via PCIe 3.0 x16. The GPU supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RX 580 scores 8813 in PassMark G3D and 3488 in GPU compute. Its Geekbench scores are 45235 in Metal, 37453 in OpenCL, and 45173 in Vulkan. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 1005. These numbers place it at the 53rd percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Mobile at 0.1% higher average score.

The GPU's role in The Medium is clearly the primary bottleneck. The 256 GB/s memory bandwidth and 6.175 TFLOPS of FP32 compute are insufficient for the game's rendering demands. The 8 GB VRAM is adequate in capacity, but the bandwidth is not enough to sustain high resolutions. The severe frame rate drops at 1440p and 4K indicate that the GPU is running out of memory bandwidth, while even at 1080p, the settings scaling shows that each quality tier adds an insurmountable load.

FAQ

Q: Can this system run The Medium at 1080p with playable frame rates?

A: Only at Low settings, where the measured average is 46 FPS. At Medium settings, the average drops to 29 FPS with a minimum of 25 FPS, which is below the 30 FPS threshold generally considered playable. High and Ultra settings yield 19 FPS and 12 FPS respectively.

Q: What is the best resolution/settings combination for this hardware?

A: The data shows that 1080p Low is the only configuration exceeding 30 FPS average. All other tested combinations fall below 30 FPS, with 1440p Low at 29 FPS being the closest alternative.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: This pairing ranks 3707 out of 3724 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the bottom 0.5% of all systems. Only 17 other combinations performed worse.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for the low performance?

A: The GPU is the primary bottleneck. The frame rates drop dramatically with resolution increases (from 46 FPS at 1080p Low to 15 FPS at 4K Low) while the CPU workload remains relatively constant. However, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads may contribute to minimum frame rate issues.

Q: What are the GPU's key specifications relevant to this game's performance?

A: The RX 580 has 2304 shading units, 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus with 256.0 GB/s bandwidth, and a boost clock of 1340 MHz. Its FP32 compute is 6.175 TFLOPS, which is insufficient for The Medium's demands at higher settings.

Q: Does the CPU's integrated graphics affect performance in this test?

A: The measured FPS data uses the discrete RX 580 GPU. The CPU's integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are not relevant to the measured results, as the system uses the dedicated GPU for rendering.