The Medium

# The Medium: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

The Medium is a fixed-camera horror title that punishes mid-range hardware with its dual-reality rendering technique, and this combo lands near the bottom of the database at rank 1600 out of 1689 tested combinations. The GTX 1650’s 4 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus are the primary bottlenecks here, as the Ryzen 5 5600X offers strong single-thread performance that never gets fully utilized at any resolution. Benchmark results show a system that can manage playable frame rates only at 1080p with Low settings, while every other configuration falls below the 30 FPS threshold that most builders would consider acceptable for a slow-paced horror game.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a GPU-bound scenario where the GTX 1650 is the limiting component. At Low settings, the measured average FPS declines from 44.9 at 1080p to 39.3 at 1440p, then falls steeply to 29 at 4K. The 1080p-to-1440p transition costs only 5.6 FPS (a 12.5% reduction), while the 1440p-to-4K step costs 10.3 FPS (a 26% reduction), indicating that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and fill rate become progressively more strained as pixel count rises.

The scaling pattern shifts dramatically at Medium settings. Here, 1080p delivers 27.2 FPS, dropping to 24.1 at 1440p and 18.2 at 4K. The percentage losses are more uniform across each step, suggesting that the additional shading work from Medium settings saturates the GPU’s compute units earlier, making resolution scaling more linear. At High settings, the curve flattens: 18.2 FPS at 1080p, 17.5 at 1440p, and 15 at 4K. The small gaps between resolutions at High settings indicate that the GPU is already overwhelmed at 1080p, so adding pixels makes less relative difference.

Ultra settings produce the most extreme degradation, with 15.2 FPS at 1080p, 14.8 at 1440p, and 12.4 at 4K. This near-flat response across resolutions confirms that the GTX 1650’s 2.984 TFLOPS FP32 throughput and 128.1 GB/s bandwidth are exhausted by the game’s rendering demands even at the lowest tested resolution. The data suggests that players should treat 1080p as the only viable resolution, and even then, only with reduced settings.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 5 5600X brings 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 3 Vermeer architecture, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz. Its benchmark scores are respectable for a mid-range desktop processor: Cinebench R23 multi-core reaches 18578, single-core 2622, and Geekbench multi-core 8673 with single-core 2111. The CPU’s percentile ranking of 78 against all processors places it well above average, and its nearest rival comparisons show it within 0.7% of chips like the Intel Core i7-10700 and AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT.

However, the measured FPS data shows no scenario where the CPU becomes the bottleneck. Even at 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work, the 44.9 FPS average is far below what the 5600X could theoretically feed. The CPU’s 3DMark scores — 917 single-thread, 5582 for 16 threads — indicate ample headroom for this game’s logic and AI. The Medium’s fixed-camera perspective and relatively simple scene management do not stress multi-threaded performance, so the 5600X’s 12 threads remain largely idle.

The PassMark single-thread score of 3364 and data compression score of 252306 confirm strong per-core capability, which matters more than raw core count for this title. The CPU’s 32 MB L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support at 51.2 GB/s provide sufficient bandwidth for game data streaming. In practical terms, the 5600X is overqualified for this pairing — the GTX 1650 prevents it from ever being the limiting factor, and upgrading the GPU would yield far more FPS than any CPU change.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the clear performance ceiling for this combo. Built on the Turing architecture at 12 nm, it packs 896 shading units, 56 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, with a base clock of 1485 MHz and boost of 1665 MHz. The 4 GB GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus delivers 128.1 GB/s bandwidth, which is the critical weakness for The Medium — a game that loads high-resolution textures for its dual-world rendering.

The GPU’s benchmark results tell a consistent story: PassMark G3D score of 7880, 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 305, and Geekbench Vulkan score of 35966 place it at the 43rd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Quadro P2200 (0.5% higher score) and AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (0.5% lower), confirming it sits in entry-level territory. The GTX 1650’s lack of dedicated ray tracing cores and tensor cores means it relies entirely on rasterization, which The Medium’s fixed-camera style does not heavily exploit.

The VRAM limitation becomes evident when comparing settings at the same resolution. At 1080p, Low settings achieve 44.9 FPS, but Medium drops to 27.2 FPS — a 39% reduction. This is not a pure compute limitation; it reflects the 4 GB buffer being overwhelmed as texture quality and shadow detail increase. The GPU’s memory clock of 2001 MHz (8 Gbps effective) cannot compensate for the narrow bus, and the 53.28 GPixel/s pixel rate and 93.24 GTexel/s texture rate are insufficient for High and Ultra presets. The 75 W TDP and lack of power connectors indicate this is a slot-powered card, so there is no headroom for boosting beyond stock behavior.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows point to 1080p Low as the only configuration that delivers a consistently playable experience, with an average of 44.9 FPS. This is the sole preset across all resolutions that exceeds the 30 FPS baseline; every other combination falls below it. At 1080p Medium, the average drops to 27.2 FPS, which is borderline for a slow-paced horror title but risks stutter during scene transitions. At 1080p High, 18.2 FPS makes the game feel sluggish, and at 1080p Ultra, 15.2 FPS is essentially unplayable.

For players who prioritize visual fidelity over smoothness, 1440p Low at 39.3 FPS is the next-best option, but the jump from 1080p to 1440p at Low sacrifices only 5.6 FPS, so the higher resolution is arguably the better choice if the display supports it. However, 4K at any setting is not viable — even Low averages only 29 FPS, and Medium, High, and Ultra all sit in the 12.4–18.2 FPS range, which would make the game’s fixed-camera pans feel choppy.

The practical recommendation is to start at 1080p Low and adjust upward only if the player tolerates sub-30 FPS. Given that the GTX 1650’s nearest rival, the Quadro P2200, scores only 0.5% higher in synthetic benchmarks, no settings tweak will unlock meaningful performance gains. The data shows a 17.7 FPS gap between Low and Medium at 1080p, so skipping Medium entirely and testing High (18.2 FPS) is pointless — the GPU cannot sustain even Medium’s demands consistently.

How This Combo Ranks

With a combo rank of 1600 out of 1689 tested combinations, this pairing sits in the bottom 5% of all systems in the database for The Medium. This ranking reflects the GPU’s position at the 43rd percentile of all GPUs combined with a game that is unusually demanding on memory bandwidth. The CPU’s strong 78th percentile ranking does little to lift the combo, as the game is overwhelmingly GPU-bound in every measured scenario.

The rank of 1600 means that approximately 89 other combinations perform worse, which likely includes systems with even older GPUs or lower-end CPUs paired with the same GTX 1650. However, the enormous gap between this combo and mid-range systems is not captured by the rank alone — the difference between 44.9 FPS at 1080p Low and a playable 60 FPS experience is substantial. The CPU’s nearest rivals (Intel Core i7-10700 at -0.3% delta, AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT at -0.3%) would not change this ranking if swapped in, as the GPU remains the constraint.

The data indicates that this combo is only suitable for players who accept significant compromises. The GPU’s end-of-life production status and the CPU’s active production status suggest that builders should consider this a legacy pairing, not a future-proof investment. The 4 GB VRAM is the single largest issue, as The Medium’s texture streaming at Medium settings already causes a 39% FPS penalty compared to Low at 1080p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are: Low 44.9 FPS, Medium 27.2 FPS, High 18.2 FPS, and Ultra 15.2 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 29.7 FPS, with the largest single drop occurring between Low and Medium (17.7 FPS). This suggests that Medium introduces a significant increase in texture resolution or shadow complexity that the 4 GB VRAM cannot handle efficiently.

At 2560x1440, the averages are: Low 39.3 FPS, Medium 24.1 FPS, High 17.5 FPS, and Ultra 14.8 FPS. The Low-to-Medium drop is 15.2 FPS, slightly smaller than at 1080p, indicating that the GPU is already memory-limited at 1440p Low and the incremental cost of Medium is relatively less. The High-to-Ultra gap is only 2.7 FPS, showing diminishing returns at the top end.

At 3840x2160, the averages are: Low 29 FPS, Medium 18.2 FPS, High 15 FPS, and Ultra 12.4 FPS. The Low-to-Medium drop is 10.8 FPS, and the Ultra setting at 12.4 FPS is the lowest measured value in the entire dataset. Across all resolutions, the Low setting provides a 2.2x to 2.4x FPS advantage over Ultra, confirming that the GTX 1650’s performance is heavily dependent on aggressive settings reduction. The data shows no scenario where Medium or higher settings achieve even 30 FPS, making Low the only practical choice for this hardware combination.