The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F and AMD Radeon RX 570 pairing delivers a deeply challenging experience in The Medium, a horror title that demands far more from the GPU than this 2017-era card can provide. The measured data shows a combo that ranks near the very bottom of the database, and the framerate numbers confirm that this setup is only viable at the lowest settings and resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is severe and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lives. At Low settings, the average framerate falls from 44 FPS at 1920x1080 to 37 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 7 FPS, and then further down to 29 FPS at 3840x2160. That journey from 1080p to 4K at Low represents a 34% decrease in average FPS, which is a substantial hit but not a catastrophic one.

The scaling becomes more punishing as settings rise. At Medium settings, the averages are 28 FPS at 1080p, 23 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 5 FPS, and the drop from 1440p to 4K is another 5 FPS. At High settings, the pattern continues with 20 FPS at 1080p, 17 FPS at 1440p, and 13 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most brutal, starting at just 16 FPS at 1080p, falling to 13 FPS at 1440p, and bottoming out at 10 FPS at 4K.

These numbers indicate that the GPU is the limiting component at every resolution. The framerate scales nearly linearly with the number of pixels being rendered, which is the classic signature of a GPU-bound scenario. If the CPU were the constraint, we would expect to see a much flatter curve, with 1080p and 4K performing similarly because the processor would be saturated regardless of resolution. That is not the case here. The RX 570 is simply overwhelmed by the pixel count, and reducing resolution provides the only meaningful path to higher FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is the primary driver of this combo's poor performance. This GPU features 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 224.0 GB/s. The memory clock is listed at 1750 MHz, with an effective speed of 7 Gbps. The core runs at a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz. The GPU has 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, with a pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s. Its FP32 performance is 5.095 TFLOPS.

The 4 GB VRAM capacity is a critical weakness for a game like The Medium, which is known for its demanding visual fidelity. At 4K resolution with High settings, the card manages only 13 FPS on average. Even at 1080p, the High preset yields a meager 20 FPS. The data suggests that the VRAM capacity and the overall compute throughput are insufficient for this title. The card's percentile ranking against all GPUs is 74, which sounds decent, but that is a synthetic benchmark average. In this specific game, the real-world results are far less flattering.

The benchmark results for the RX 570 show a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 880, a Geekbench Metal score of 39349, an OpenCL score of 32084, and a Vulkan score of 42752. These synthetic scores place it near the AMD Radeon RX 6800M, which has a deltaPct of -0.4, and the AMD Radeon RX 470, which has a deltaPct of -0.8. The RX 570 is also close to the AMD Radeon R9 M295X and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000, with deltaPct values of 0.7 and 1.2 respectively. These comparisons show that the GPU is competitive with mid-range parts from several generations ago, but that is simply not enough for The Medium at modern resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the Ryzen 5 7400F and the RX 570 ranks 2793 out of 2911 tested combos in this game. This places it in the bottom 4% of all configurations, which is a stark indicator of just how poorly this pairing performs in The Medium. The rank is not a reflection of the CPU, which is quite capable, but rather a direct consequence of the GPU's limitations.

To put this in perspective, the CPU alone is a strong performer. The Ryzen 5 7400F has a percentile ranking of 83 against all CPUs, and its average benchmark score is 32750. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i5-14600T with a deltaPct of 0.1, the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with a deltaPct of 0.2, and the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 with a deltaPct of 0.3. The only rival that beats it is the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H, which has a deltaPct of -0.2. This means the CPU is performing exactly in line with its peers, offering competitive multi-threaded and single-threaded performance.

The GPU, however, is a different story. The RX 570 has an average benchmark score of 28766 and a percentile ranking of 74. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6800M with a deltaPct of -0.4, the AMD Radeon R9 M295X with a deltaPct of 0.7, the AMD Radeon RX 470 with a deltaPct of -0.8, and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 with a deltaPct of 1.2. These are all older or lower-tier parts, and none of them are suited for demanding modern titles at high resolutions. The combo's rank of 2793 out of 2911 shows that the GPU bottleneck completely overshadows the CPU's strength.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of what to expect. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 44 FPS. The Medium preset drops to 28 FPS, with a minimum of 23 FPS and a maximum of 32 FPS. The High preset averages 20 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 16 FPS. None of these are playable for a smooth experience, though Low is the only setting that approaches a reasonable framerate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers fall further. Low averages 37 FPS, Medium averages 23 FPS with a minimum of 20 FPS and a maximum of 27 FPS, High averages 17 FPS, and Ultra averages 13 FPS. At this resolution, even the Low preset is borderline, and anything above Medium is a slideshow.

At 3840x2160, the results are mostly academic. Low averages 29 FPS, Medium averages 18 FPS with a minimum of 15 FPS and a maximum of 21 FPS, High averages 13 FPS, and Ultra averages 10 FPS. The 4K resolution is simply not viable with this GPU, regardless of the settings.

The only preset that provides a consistently playable experience is Low at 1080p, with an average of 44 FPS. The Medium preset at 1080p, with an average of 28 FPS, is playable but will have noticeable stutters, especially in a game like The Medium that relies on atmospheric tension. The frame time data for Medium at 1080p shows a minimum of 23 FPS and a maximum of 32 FPS, which indicates a 9 FPS variance that could be distracting.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F is a modern 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, codenamed Raphael. It has a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU supports DDR5 memory in a dual-channel configuration, with a memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s. It uses the AMD Socket AM5 and is built on a 5 nm process from TSMC, with 6,570 million transistors on a 71 mm² die. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache.

This CPU is far more capable than the GPU. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 21765, and its single-core score is 3072. In Cinebench R20, it scores 9141 multi-core and 1290 single-core, while in Cinebench R15 it scores 2193 multi-core and 309 single-core. The PassMark results are equally strong, with a multi-thread score of 25645 and a single-thread score of 3689. The CPU handles data compression at 289999, encryption at 16712, floating-point math at 45799, and integer math at 74745. These are all solid numbers that show the CPU is not a limiting factor in this game.

In The Medium, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and game logic, but the RX 570 is so slow that it cannot take advantage of the CPU's speed. The bottleneck is entirely on the GPU side, and the data supports this. If the CPU were the issue, we would see similar FPS across all resolutions, but we do not. The FPS scales with resolution, confirming that the GPU is the constraint. The Ryzen 5 7400F is doing its job; it is just paired with a GPU that is too weak for this title.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the only reasonable recommendation is to play at 1920x1080 with the Low preset. This configuration yields an average of 44 FPS, which is the only setting that breaks the 40 FPS barrier. The Low preset at 1440p also averages 37 FPS, which is playable but not ideal. If you have a 1080p monitor, Low is the way to go. The Medium preset at 1080p, with an average of 28 FPS, is a possible trade-off if you want better visuals, but the frame time variance from 23 to 32 FPS makes it a risky choice for a game that relies on smooth pacing.

At 1440p, the Low preset is the only option that is close to playable, with an average of 37 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p drops to 23 FPS, which is too low for a comfortable experience. At 4K, no setting is playable, with the best case being 29 FPS at Low, which is still below the threshold for smooth gameplay.

In practical terms, this combo is best suited for 1080p gaming with the expectation that you will need to use Low settings. The Ultra and High presets are not viable at any resolution, as they all produce average FPS below 20. The data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor, and no amount of CPU performance can compensate for the RX 570's lack of raw power in this title. If you want to play The Medium with this setup, accept that you will be playing at 1080p Low, and even then, you may encounter occasional frame drops. The Medium preset at 1080p is the highest you should consider, and only if you can tolerate an average of 28 FPS.