The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 combination produces a distinct performance profile in The Medium, characterized by significant scaling across resolutions and settings. The measured data shows this pairing ranks 1194th out of 2911 tested combos, placing it in the upper-middle tier of the database. The system demonstrates a clear pattern where lower settings unlock substantially higher frame rates, while higher presets quickly push the hardware toward its limits, particularly at 4K resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K reveals a system that is heavily influenced by resolution, indicating the GPU is the primary limiting component in most scenarios. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 123 FPS at 1920x1080 to 104 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 19 FPS, and then to 81 FPS at 3840x2160, another 23 FPS drop. This progression shows a 34% decrease from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which is a substantial decline but still leaves the game playable at all resolutions with this preset.

The Medium settings row provides the most complete data with minimum and maximum frame rates recorded. At 1080p Medium, the average is 77 FPS with a range of 65 to 88 FPS. Moving to 1440p Medium drops the average to 65 FPS, with a range of 55 to 74 FPS. At 4K Medium, the average falls further to 51 FPS, with a minimum of 43 and maximum of 58 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings represents a 34% reduction in average FPS, mirroring the Low preset pattern almost exactly.

High settings tell a different story. The 1080p High average of 55 FPS drops to 46 FPS at 1440p, then to 36 FPS at 4K. This represents a 35% decrease from 1080p to 4K, similar to the other presets, but the absolute values are much lower. The system appears to be GPU-bound across all resolutions, as the consistent percentage drops suggest the CPU is not introducing a bottleneck that would flatten the scaling curve at lower resolutions.

Ultra settings push the hardware hardest. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 44 FPS, which drops to 37 FPS at 1440p and 29 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result of 29 FPS is below the threshold for smooth gameplay, while even 1080p Ultra struggles to maintain 45 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is a 34% reduction, again consistent with the other presets, confirming that resolution scaling is uniform across settings and that the GPU workload dominates the performance equation.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU/GPU combo in The Medium?

A: Based on the measured data, 1920x1080 is the only resolution where all four settings presets achieve an average above 40 FPS. At 2560x1440, Ultra drops to 37 FPS average, and at 3840x2160, both High and Ultra fall below 40 FPS. The 1080p resolution provides the most headroom across all quality levels.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 perform relative to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The GPU's average benchmark score is 17208, which places it 0.7% above the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17083) and 1% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17037). It trails the NVIDIA Tesla K40c by 1.5%, which scores 17468. The RTX 3070 sits at the 61st percentile among all GPUs.

Q: Does the Ryzen 5 7400F bottleneck the RTX 3070 in this game?

A: The consistent percentage scaling across resolutions suggests no significant CPU bottleneck. The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K are proportionally similar at every settings preset, indicating the GPU workload is the limiting factor. The CPU's multi-threaded performance, as shown by its Cinebench R23 score of 21765, provides ample headroom for this title.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 104 FPS while Ultra averages 37 FPS. This represents a 67 FPS difference, with Low delivering nearly three times the frame rate of Ultra. The Medium preset at 65 FPS sits between these extremes.

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 4K with any settings?

A: No. The highest 4K result is 81 FPS at Low settings, but this drops to 51 FPS at Medium. At High, the average is 36 FPS, and at Ultra it falls to 29 FPS. Only the Low preset exceeds 60 FPS at 3840x2160.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rivals in overall benchmark scores?

A: The Ryzen 5 7400F has an average benchmark score of 32750, which is nearly identical to its nearest rivals. It scores 0.1% above the Intel Core i5-14600T (32707) and 0.2% above the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (32697), while trailing the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H by 0.2% (32812).

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, built on a 5 nm process by TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB of L1 cache per core, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. It supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and a memory bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s.

The processor's benchmark results indicate strong single-thread and multi-thread capabilities. In Cinebench R23, it scores 3072 in single-core and 21765 in multi-core tests. The Passmark single-thread score is 3689, while the multi-thread score reaches 25645. These results place the CPU at the 83rd percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 32750.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU, as the frame rate scaling patterns are consistent with GPU-bound performance. The game's requirements are met comfortably by this processor, which ranks just 0.1% above the Intel Core i5-14600T and 0.2% above the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in overall scores. The Ryzen 5 7400F does trail the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850H by 0.2%, but these differences are negligible in real-world gaming scenarios.

The 6-core configuration with 12 threads provides sufficient parallelism for modern game engines, and the high boost clock of 4.70 GHz ensures responsive single-threaded performance. The 32 MB of L3 cache helps reduce memory latency, which is beneficial for game workloads that frequently access shared data. The CPU's 65 W TDP indicates efficient power consumption, allowing sustained boost clocks without thermal throttling in most systems.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 7400F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 achieves a rank of 1194 out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium. This places the system in the 59th percentile of all tested combinations, indicating that it performs better than the majority of systems in the database but is not among the top performers.

The ranking context is important for understanding the system's position. With 2911 total combinations tested, a rank of 1194 means there are 1193 combos that perform better and 1717 that perform worse. This suggests the system is solidly in the upper-middle tier, capable of handling the game at reasonable settings but not at the highest quality levels with maximum frame rates.

When considering the individual components, the GPU's percentile rank of 61 among all GPUs is slightly higher than the combo's overall position, while the CPU's percentile rank of 83 is significantly higher. This discrepancy indicates that the GPU is the limiting factor in this pairing, which aligns with the resolution scaling analysis showing GPU-bound performance across all settings.

The combo's ranking in The Medium specifically may differ from its ranking in other games, as the game's optimization and requirements vary. The measured data shows that the system can achieve playable frame rates at medium-to-high settings in most resolutions, but struggles at ultra settings, particularly at higher resolutions. This places it in a position where users must make trade-offs between visual quality and performance.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides clear guidance on which settings preset offers the best experience for this hardware combination. The Low preset delivers the highest frame rates across all resolutions, with 123 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. These numbers are well above the threshold for smooth gameplay, but Low settings typically sacrifice visual quality.

The Medium preset at 1080p offers the best balance of performance and visual fidelity. With an average of 77 FPS and a minimum of 65 FPS, this configuration ensures consistent frame delivery without dropping below 60 FPS. At 1440p, Medium still achieves 65 FPS average with a minimum of 55 FPS, which is acceptable for most players despite occasional dips below 60.

For users prioritizing frame rate at 1440p, the Low preset at 104 FPS provides a significantly smoother experience than Medium at 65 FPS. However, the visual difference between Low and Medium in a horror game like The Medium can be substantial, as atmospheric effects and lighting play crucial roles in the experience.

The High preset only achieves an average of 55 FPS at 1080p, falling to 46 FPS at 1440p. This preset is not recommended for those seeking consistent 60 FPS gameplay, as it fails to reach that threshold at any resolution. The Ultra preset is similarly problematic, with 44 FPS at 1080p being its best result.

Based on the data, the recommended configuration is Medium settings at 1920x1080, which provides 77 FPS average with a minimum of 65 FPS. For 1440p users, Medium at 65 FPS average is the highest quality preset that maintains playable frame rates, though the minimum of 55 FPS may cause noticeable stutters in demanding scenes.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the four settings presets produce the following average frame rates: Low achieves 123 FPS, Medium achieves 77 FPS with a range of 65 to 88 FPS, High achieves 55 FPS, and Ultra achieves 44 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steady decline, with each step up in quality costing approximately 20-25% of the frame rate.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 104 FPS at Low, 65 FPS at Medium (with a range of 55 to 74 FPS), 46 FPS at High, and 37 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p results show a similar pattern to 1080p, with the gap between Low and Medium being 39 FPS, and the gap between Medium and High being 19 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the averages drop to 81 FPS at Low, 51 FPS at Medium (with a range of 43 to 58 FPS), 36 FPS at High, and 29 FPS at Ultra. The 4K Medium result of 51 FPS is the highest quality preset that maintains an average above 50 FPS at this resolution.

The complete dataset shows that the Medium preset is the only configuration with full minimum and maximum frame rate data recorded. At 1080p Medium, the frame rate fluctuates between 65 and 88 FPS, providing a 23 FPS variance. At 1440p Medium, the variance is 19 FPS (55 to 74), and at 4K Medium, the variance is 15 FPS (43 to 58). This decreasing variance at higher resolutions indicates that the frame pacing becomes more consistent as the GPU workload increases.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is built on the Ampere architecture using an 8 nm process at Samsung, with 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. It features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output units. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1500 MHz with a boost clock of 1725 MHz, and its 8 GB of GDDR6 memory runs at an effective speed of 14 Gbps across a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s.

The RTX 3070's compute capabilities include 20.31 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 46 ray tracing cores, along with 184 tensor cores. The GPU's pixel rate is 165.6 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 317.4 GTexel/s. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, making it fully compatible with modern game APIs.

In synthetic benchmarks, the RTX 3070 achieves a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 3162, a Geekbench OpenCL score of 112821, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 21022. Its Passmark G3D score is 22214, with a GPU compute score of 11195. The GPU's average benchmark score of 17208 places it at the 61st percentile among all GPUs.

The GPU's role in The Medium is clearly dominant, as evidenced by the consistent scaling patterns across resolutions. The 8 GB of VRAM is sufficient for this game at all tested settings and resolutions, as no memory-related performance drops are apparent in the data. The GPU's 220 W TDP and dual-slot design indicate it is a power-hungry component that requires adequate cooling, but its performance in this title is limited by its raw compute capabilities rather than memory capacity or bandwidth.

The RTX 3070's performance relative to its nearest rivals shows it sits just 0.7% above the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT and 1% above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, while trailing the NVIDIA Tesla K40c by 1.5%. These close margins indicate that the RTX 3070 is competitive with its peers, but the measured FPS data in The Medium shows that even with this level of performance, the GPU struggles to maintain high frame rates at higher quality presets, particularly at 4K resolution.