The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built around dual-reality rendering, presents a distinctive workload where the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination yields a wide performance spread depending on resolution and quality settings. The measured data shows this pairing is capable of high frame rates at lower resolutions, but becomes increasingly GPU-bound as resolution climbs, with the CPU's Zen 3 architecture providing a solid foundation.

Resolution Scaling

The performance curve from 1080p to 4K clearly illustrates where the bottleneck shifts in this system. At 1920x1080 with High settings, the combination produces an average of 87.4 FPS, which rises to 110.1 FPS at Medium and 130.8 FPS at Low. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs about 20 FPS, while moving from Medium to High drops another 22.7 FPS, indicating that the GPU has ample headroom at this resolution and the frame rate is largely dictated by the CPU's single-threaded capabilities.

Moving to 2560x1440, the scaling pattern changes noticeably. High settings yield 75 FPS, Medium delivers 100 FPS, and Low reaches 127.4 FPS. The delta between Low and Medium is 27.4 FPS, while Medium to High costs 25 FPS. At 1440p, the RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory and 736.3 GB/s bandwidth begin to matter more, but the CPU still keeps pace, as evidenced by the relatively small performance drop from 1080p to 1440p at each preset (roughly 10-14% across the board).

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the clear limiting factor. High settings drop to 54 FPS, Medium to 80.7 FPS, and Low to 116.9 FPS. The gap between 1440p and 4K at High is 21 FPS, while at Medium it is 19.3 FPS, and at Low it is 10.5 FPS. This disproportionate scaling at 4K Low versus 4K High suggests that the game's fixed-camera angles and dual-world rendering create a scenario where the RTX 4080 SUPER's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is heavily taxed at higher quality settings, while the CPU has more than enough headroom to feed frames even at 4K Low.

The Ultra preset further illustrates this GPU-bound behavior: 47.8 FPS at 4K, 58.5 FPS at 1440p, and 65.6 FPS at 1080p. The relatively small delta between 1080p and 1440p Ultra (7.1 FPS) compared to the 1440p to 4K drop (10.7 FPS) indicates that Ultra settings introduce effects that scale poorly with resolution, likely related to the game's volumetric lighting and shadow quality. The data suggests that for this title, 1440p High is the sweet spot, offering 75 FPS, while 1080p High provides a comfortable 87.4 FPS for those prioritizing frame rate over fidelity.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, brings substantial resources to this horror title. Its 10240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 112 ROPs are backed by 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s. The boost clock of 2550 MHz and base clock of 2295 MHz provide the compute throughput needed for The Medium's dual-reality rendering, where two perspectives must be processed simultaneously.

In benchmark terms, this GPU scores 34245 in Passmark G3D and 19822 in Passmark GPU Compute, placing it in the 88th percentile of all GPUs. Its average benchmark score of 53610 puts it just 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT and 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 7700S by 2.1% and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti by 2.9%. These margins are modest, suggesting that in this game, the GPU's raw compute is not the sole differentiator.

The measured FPS data reveals that the RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB VRAM is sufficient even at 4K Ultra, where the game averages 47.8 FPS. The memory clock of 1438 MHz with 23 Gbps effective speed provides the bandwidth to handle the game's texture streaming at high resolutions without stuttering. However, the performance drop from High to Ultra at 4K (54 to 47.8 FPS) suggests that the Ultra preset enables settings that push beyond what the GPU can comfortably sustain at 60 FPS, even with this level of hardware. At 1080p, the GPU is clearly underutilized at Low settings (130.8 FPS), indicating that the CPU becomes the limiting factor below 1440p.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, a 7 nm Zen 3 part with the Cezanne codename, provides 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.40 GHz. Its 16 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 51.2 GB/s bandwidth are modest by modern standards, but the architecture's efficiency shows in this game's results. The CPU's integrated Radeon Vega 7 graphics are irrelevant here, as the system relies on the discrete RTX 4080 SUPER.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 5600G scores 16758 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2365 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 7693 and single-core of 1933. Its Passmark single-thread score of 3177 and multithread score of 19717 place it in the 78th percentile of all CPUs. The average benchmark score of 19983 puts it within 0.2% of the Intel Core i7-11600H, 0.2% behind the Intel Core i7-11800H and AMD EPYC 7713P, and 0.3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX. These tight margins indicate that the 5600G is competitive with much more expensive processors in multi-threaded workloads, though its 6-core configuration may limit performance in heavily threaded titles.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p, where frame rates are highest. At Low settings, the combination achieves 130.8 FPS at 1080p, but this drops to 127.4 FPS at 1440p and 116.9 FPS at 4K. The relatively small reduction from 1080p to 1440p (3.4 FPS) suggests that the CPU is not a significant constraint at Low settings, but the larger drop to 4K (10.5 FPS from 1440p) indicates that the GPU is doing more work per frame. At High settings, the CPU's influence is more subtle: 87.4 FPS at 1080p drops to 75 FPS at 1440p (a 12.4 FPS loss) and then to 54 FPS at 4K (a 21 FPS loss), showing that the GPU's workload increases disproportionately with resolution.

How This Combo Ranks

Among the 1689 tested combinations in this database, this pairing of AMD Ryzen 5 5600G with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 191st in The Medium. This places it in the top 11.3% of all tested combos, which is a strong result given that the CPU is a mid-range part from 2021 while the GPU is a high-end offering from 2024. The ranking suggests that the game is more GPU-dependent than CPU-dependent, as a higher-ranked CPU would likely yield diminishing returns.

The CPU's average benchmark score of 19983, which puts it in the 78th percentile, is paired with a GPU that sits in the 88th percentile with an average score of 53610. The disparity between these percentile rankings — 10 points — explains why the combo ranks 191st rather than higher: the CPU is the weaker link in this pairing. However, the data shows that in The Medium specifically, the 5600G's single-thread performance (Passmark single-thread score of 3177) is sufficient to avoid becoming a bottleneck at most settings, as evidenced by the healthy frame rates at 1440p and 1080p.

The rank of 191 out of 1689 combos means that 1498 tested combinations performed worse, while 190 performed better. This is a solid result for a CPU that was designed as an APU with integrated graphics, not as a high-end gaming processor. The 5600G's 6-core, 12-thread configuration with a 65 W TDP is efficient, but it lacks the higher core counts and larger cache of more expensive Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 parts, which could provide additional headroom in CPU-limited scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS data, the optimal settings for this combination depend on the target resolution and desired frame rate. At 3840x2160, the Medium preset delivers 80.7 FPS, which is a comfortable experience for a horror game that does not require competitive frame rates. High settings at 4K provide 54 FPS, which is playable but may feel less smooth, while Ultra at 47.8 FPS is below the 60 FPS threshold and not recommended for the best experience.

At 2560x1440, the High preset offers 75 FPS, which is an excellent balance of visual quality and performance. The Medium preset at 100 FPS is also viable for those who prefer higher frame rates, while Ultra at 58.5 FPS is borderline — it is above 50 FPS but below 60, so players must judge whether the extra visual fidelity justifies the frame rate drop. Low at 127.4 FPS is unnecessary unless chasing maximum refresh rates.

For 1920x1080, the High preset at 87.4 FPS is the clear recommendation. The Ultra preset at 65.6 FPS is also playable, and the Medium preset at 110.1 FPS provides headroom for high refresh rate displays. The Low preset at 130.8 FPS is overkill for most monitors and sacrifices too much visual quality in a game where atmosphere and lighting are crucial.

The data indicates that the Medium preset at 1440p (100 FPS) offers the best balance of resolution, quality, and performance, while the High preset at 1080p (87.4 FPS) is the safest choice for consistent frame pacing. For 4K displays, Medium (80.7 FPS) is the only setting that maintains a smooth experience, as High and Ultra both fall below 60 FPS. The 5600G's single-thread score of 2365 in Cinebench R23 suggests it can keep up with the RTX 4080 SUPER's frame output at 1080p and 1440p, but at 4K the GPU's workload dominates, making the CPU's limitations largely irrelevant.