The Medium

The Medium is a demanding horror title, and this pairing of the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 lands in a precarious position. The data shows a combination that struggles to maintain playable frame rates, placing it at rank 1653 out of 1689 tested combos. This places it in the bottom 2% of all tested system configurations, indicating a severe performance bottleneck that will require significant settings compromises to navigate.

How This Combo Ranks

The benchmark results place this configuration at rank 1653 out of 1689 tested combinations, meaning 98% of systems tested outperform it in this specific title. This poor standing is not surprising given the hardware pairing. The CPU is a modern 6-core, 12-thread Zen 4 part that sits in the 82nd percentile against all CPUs, suggesting it is a capable processor. However, the GPU is the clear limiting factor, sitting in the 43rd percentile against all GPUs. The combination of a top-tier CPU with a low-end GPU creates an extreme imbalance that the data reflects. The system's overall average benchmark score of 24993 for the CPU and 8713 for the GPU shows a wide gap in capability. This ranking implies that for The Medium, the experience will be defined by the GPU's limitations, not the CPU's potential. The data suggests that this is a configuration built for general productivity or esports titles, not for demanding single-player horror experiences.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the primary bottleneck in this configuration. It comes equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 128.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The core clocks are set at a base of 1485 MHz and a boost of 1665 MHz. This hardware is responsible for the frame rates observed in the measured data. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is a critical constraint for a game like The Medium, which likely requires significant texture memory at higher resolutions and settings. The data shows a dramatic collapse in performance when moving from Low to Medium settings, particularly at 1080p where the average FPS drops from 43.7 to 25.1. This suggests that the game's medium preset pushes the GPU's memory or compute resources past a breaking point. The GTX 1650's Turing architecture, while supporting DirectX 12, lacks dedicated ray tracing cores, which may force the game to use more traditional rendering paths that still prove too heavy for this GPU.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data provides a clear path for playability. At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers an average of 43.7 FPS, which is the only setting at any resolution that approaches a smooth experience. The Medium preset at 1080p drops to 25.1 FPS, which is a significant decrease for only a modest visual upgrade. The High preset at 1080p yields 19.7 FPS, and Ultra drops to 16.6 FPS, both of which are below the threshold for comfortable play. The data indicates that the Low preset at 1080p is the only viable option for a reasonably fluid experience. While 43.7 FPS is not ideal for fast-paced action, it is the best this combination can achieve. Pushing to 1440p results in a 35.5 FPS average on Low, which could be acceptable for a slower-paced horror game, but the 1080p Low setting offers the best balance of performance and stability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frames per second data reveals a clear performance hierarchy across resolutions and settings. At 1920x1080, the averages range from 43.7 FPS on Low to 16.6 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset achieves 25.1 FPS, and High achieves 19.7 FPS. Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers shift downward: Low yields 35.5 FPS, Medium drops to 20.5 FPS, High produces 18.5 FPS, and Ultra falls to 11.4 FPS. At 3840x2160, performance becomes largely unusable: Low averages 30 FPS, Medium averages 15.7 FPS, High averages 16.1 FPS, and Ultra plummets to 8.8 FPS. The data shows that the gap between Low and Medium is consistently large across all resolutions, indicating a steep algorithmic cost in the medium settings. The jump from Medium to High is smaller, while High to Ultra shows another significant drop, particularly at 4K where it falls from 16.1 to 8.8 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K highlights where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 43.7 FPS at 1080p to 35.5 FPS at 1440p and 30 FPS at 4K. This is a 31% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is a relatively mild scaling curve. This suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is still contributing to the frame time, as the GPU is not fully saturated. However, at Ultra settings, the scaling is much more severe. The frame rate falls from 16.6 FPS at 1080p to 11.4 FPS at 1440p and 8.8 FPS at 4K, a 47% drop from 1080p to 4K. This steeper curve indicates that at higher settings, the GPU becomes the absolute limiting factor, and the increased pixel count directly crushes its throughput. The data implies that the graphics card runs out of raw compute and memory bandwidth as resolution and settings increase, while the CPU has headroom to spare.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on Zen 4 architecture, clocked at 3.70 GHz base and 5.00 GHz boost. It has a 32 MB shared L3 cache and supports DDR5 memory. In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU scores 22799 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 3218 in single-core, placing it in the 82nd percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i7-11850H (0.1% faster) and the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (0.3% slower), showing it is a competitive mid-range part. However, in this game pairing, the CPU's role is minimized. The data shows that even at 1080p Low, the system only achieves 43.7 FPS, which is far below what this CPU is capable of supporting. The benchmark results indicate that the CPU is not the constraint; the GPU is. The processor is likely idle waiting for the GTX 1650 to finish rendering frames. This is evidenced by the fact that the CPU scores in the 82nd percentile while the GPU sits in the 43rd. If the GPU were upgraded, this CPU would have ample headroom to push much higher frame rates.

FAQ

Q: What is the best average FPS this combination can achieve in The Medium?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 43.7 FPS, which occurs at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: Is this system capable of running The Medium at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the best result is 30 FPS on Low settings, while Medium, High, and Ultra produce 15.7, 16.1, and 8.8 FPS respectively, indicating that 4K is only playable on the lowest settings.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested systems?

A: This configuration ranks 1653 out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 2% of all systems tested for this game.

Q: Which component is the primary bottleneck for this pairing?

A: The data strongly indicates the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the limiting factor, as its performance percentile (43rd) is far below the CPU's percentile (82nd), and frame rates collapse when settings are increased.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Medium settings at 1080p?

A: The average FPS drops from 43.7 FPS on Low to 25.1 FPS on Medium, a decrease of 18.6 FPS, which is a substantial penalty for the visual upgrade.

Q: Does the CPU have headroom for better performance in this game?

A: Yes, the Ryzen 5 7500F is a high-performing processor, and given that the frame rates are low across all settings, the CPU is not being fully utilized, leaving significant headroom for a more powerful GPU.