The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G paired with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT delivers a wide spread of frame rates in The Medium, indicating that settings selection is critical for playability. The measured data shows that the Low preset provides the only consistently fluid experience across all resolutions, while higher presets quickly become demanding.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark results reveal a steep performance curve across the four tested presets. At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 94.8 FPS, which is the highest measured value in the entire dataset. This drops to 57.5 FPS on Medium, a 39% reduction, and continues to fall to 43.2 FPS on High. The Ultra preset bottoms out at 32.9 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold many users consider the baseline for smooth gameplay.

For 2560x1440, the pattern intensifies. Low still delivers a playable 82 FPS, but Medium falls to 50.4 FPS, and High drops to 34.9 FPS. Ultra at this resolution produces only 29.4 FPS, making it unsuitable for anything but static scenes. At 3840x2160, the situation becomes more extreme: Low is the only preset that remains viable at 66.1 FPS, while Medium falls to 38.6 FPS, High to 26.7 FPS, and Ultra to 21.5 FPS.

The data suggests that the Low preset is the only reliable choice for maintaining high frame rates, particularly at higher resolutions. The step from Low to Medium costs roughly 39% of performance at 1080p, 38% at 1440p, and 42% at 4K. Given the horror genre’s reliance on smooth motion for atmosphere, the Low preset offers the best balance of responsiveness and visual clarity across all tested resolutions. Users with 1080p displays may find Medium acceptable at 57.5 FPS, but the margin for error is thin. At 4K, even Low requires the hardware to work at full capacity to stay above 60 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination ranks 1102 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the lower third of all configurations. This percentile position is notably weaker than the individual component rankings suggest. The CPU sits at the 78th percentile against all processors, and the GPU at the 63rd percentile, yet their combined performance in this specific title lands at roughly the 35th percentile (1102/1689). This discrepancy indicates that The Medium is particularly demanding on the pairing, likely due to its fixed-camera rendering style and heavy use of post-processing effects.

The nearest rivals for the CPU show that the Ryzen 5 5600G is essentially level with the Intel Core i7-11600H (0.2% faster) and the AMD EPYC 7713P (0.2% faster), while trailing the Intel Core i7-11800H by 0.2%. For the GPU, the RX 7600 XT sits 0.3% ahead of the Radeon RX 460, 1.9% ahead of the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, but 0.6% behind the RX 7600 and 1.9% behind the RTX 3070 Mobile. These small deltas suggest that neither component is dramatically out of step with its direct competitors, yet the combo’s low rank in The Medium points to a systemic bottleneck rather than a single weak part.

The measured FPS data reinforces this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 94.8 FPS, which is respectable but far from the top-tier results seen with higher-end hardware. The gap between the combo’s individual component percentiles (78th and 63rd) and its in-game rank (35th) suggests that The Medium’s engine does not scale well with this particular CPU-GPU pairing, possibly due to the CPU’s integrated graphics heritage or the GPU’s 128-bit memory interface limiting bandwidth in certain scenes.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7600 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 33 chip, manufactured on a 6 nm process at TSMC. It features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units, along with 32 ray tracing cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1980 MHz, a game clock of 2470 MHz, and a boost clock of 2755 MHz. Memory is provided by 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 288.0 GB/s.

In The Medium, the GPU’s memory capacity is not the limiting factor at lower settings, but the bandwidth becomes critical as resolution increases. The measured frame rates show that the GPU struggles to maintain performance at 4K, with only Low preset reaching 66.1 FPS. The 128-bit bus width, combined with the 288.0 GB/s bandwidth, appears insufficient for the high-resolution textures and heavy shader work that The Medium demands at higher presets. The GPU’s 64 ROPs and 176.3 GPixel/s pixel rate also constrain fill-rate-heavy scenes, which explains the steep drop from 66.1 FPS at 4K Low to 38.6 FPS at 4K Medium.

The GPU’s passmark G3D score of 17132 and its 63rd percentile ranking against all GPUs indicate a mid-range part. Its nearest rival, the RX 7600, is 0.6% faster on average, while the RTX 2060 SUPER is 1.9% slower. These small differences mean that the RX 7600 XT’s 16 GB frame buffer does not translate into a significant performance advantage in this title, where the bottleneck appears to be raw compute and memory bandwidth rather than capacity.

FAQ

Q: What is the best settings preset for 1920x1080?

A: The Low preset delivers the highest measured average FPS at 94.8. Medium drops to 57.5, which is still playable, but High and Ultra fall to 43.2 and 32.9 respectively.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming?

A: At 3840x2160, only the Low preset achieves a playable 66.1 FPS. Medium drops to 38.6, High to 26.7, and Ultra to 21.5, making higher presets impractical.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its direct rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 5600G is 0.2% faster than the Intel Core i7-11600H and 0.2% faster than the AMD EPYC 7713P, but 0.2% slower than the Intel Core i7-11800H.

Q: How does the GPU compare to the RX 7600?

A: The RX 7600 XT is 0.6% slower than the RX 7600 in average benchmark scores, despite having twice the memory capacity.

Q: What is the combo’s overall rank in this game?

A: The combination ranks 1102 out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the lower third of all configurations tested in The Medium.

Q: At what resolution does the GPU become the primary bottleneck?

A: The data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at 4K, where the frame rate drops sharply from 66.1 FPS at Low to 38.6 FPS at Medium, indicating that the 128-bit memory bus cannot sustain higher settings.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how the combo scales across resolutions. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 94.8 FPS at 1080p to 82 FPS at 1440p, a 13.5% reduction, and then to 66.1 FPS at 4K, a further 19.4% reduction. This scaling pattern is relatively gentle, suggesting that at Low settings, the bottleneck is not purely the GPU’s fill rate but rather a mix of CPU and GPU workloads.

At Medium settings, the scaling is more severe. The frame rate falls from 57.5 FPS at 1080p to 50.4 FPS at 1440p (12.3% drop), then to 38.6 FPS at 4K (23.4% drop). The accelerating decline points to the GPU becoming more dominant as the resolution increases, with the 128-bit memory bus and 64 ROPs struggling to keep pace with the pixel count.

At High settings, the pattern continues: 43.2 FPS at 1080p, 34.9 FPS at 1440p (19.2% drop), and 26.7 FPS at 4K (23.5% drop). The Ultra preset shows the worst scaling, with 32.9 FPS at 1080p falling to 29.4 FPS at 1440p (10.6% drop) and then to 21.5 FPS at 4K (26.9% drop). The proportionally larger drop from 1440p to 4K at higher presets indicates that the GPU is the primary limiting component, as the increased shader and memory bandwidth demands outpace what the RX 7600 XT can provide.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G features 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, manufactured on a 7 nm process at TSMC. Its base clock is 3.90 GHz with a boost clock of 4.40 GHz, and it carries a 65 W TDP. The CPU has 512 KB of L2 cache per core and a 16 MB L3 cache, with dual-channel DDR4 memory support providing 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role appears secondary to the GPU at higher resolutions, but it becomes more relevant at lower settings. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 94.8 FPS, which is the highest in the dataset. This suggests that the CPU can feed the GPU adequately at this resolution and settings level. However, the CPU’s 3dmark single-thread score of 872 and multicore score of 5455 indicate modest performance compared to higher-end processors, which may explain why the combo ranks only 1102 out of 1689 in this game.

The CPU’s nearest rivals show it is essentially tied with the Intel Core i7-11600H (0.2% faster) and Intel Core i7-11800H (0.2% slower), but the game’s performance does not improve correspondingly. The Ryzen 5 5600G’s integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics, while not used in this discrete GPU configuration, may indicate that the chip was designed with a balance toward iGPU performance, potentially limiting its CPU-side capabilities for gaming workloads. The 16 MB L3 cache is adequate but not exceptional, and the 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is typical for DDR4-3200, which may constrain performance in memory-sensitive scenes.

The data shows that at 1080p, the CPU can maintain above 90 FPS at Low settings, but the frame rate drops significantly at higher presets, indicating that the GPU becomes the bottleneck as graphical load increases. At 4K, the CPU’s influence is minimal, with the GPU dominating performance across all settings. This suggests that users with this combo should prioritize GPU-bound settings adjustments at higher resolutions, while at 1080p, the CPU still has headroom to support higher frame rates if the GPU can keep up.