The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine 4 with heavy use of pre-rendered backdrops and dual-reality rendering, presents a unique stress profile for the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 combination. The measured FPS data reveals a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at higher resolutions, yet shows surprising headroom at lower settings, indicating a complex balance between the CPU's Zen 4 architecture and the GPU's 8 GB memory buffer.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K demonstrates a classic GPU-bound scenario, but with an unusual twist at the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 108 FPS, which drops to 91 FPS at 1440p (a 15.7% reduction) and further to 72 FPS at 4K (a 33.3% reduction from 1080p). This relatively gentle scaling curve suggests that even at the lowest settings, the RTX 4060 is not completely overwhelmed, and the CPU's 6-core/12-thread configuration is keeping pace.

However, the High and Ultra presets tell a different story. Moving from 1080p High (49 FPS) to 1440p High (41 FPS) is a 16.3% drop, but the jump to 4K High (32 FPS) represents a 34.7% decline from 1080p. The Ultra preset shows the most dramatic falloff: 39 FPS at 1080p, 32 FPS at 1440p (17.9% lower), and just 25 FPS at 4K (35.9% lower than 1080p). This steepening curve at higher settings points to the GPU's 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus becoming increasingly inadequate as pixel count and texture fidelity rise.

The Medium preset provides the clearest insight into the limiting component. At 1080p Medium, the combo delivers 68 FPS with a 58-78 FPS range, but this collapses to 57 FPS at 1440p and 45 FPS at 4K, with the 4K run showing a 38-52 FPS variance. The fact that 4K Medium (45 FPS) outperforms 1080p Ultra (39 FPS) indicates that the game's Ultra settings introduce effects that disproportionately tax the RTX 4060's 3072 shading units and 48 ROPs, rather than being purely resolution-bound.

The data suggests that at 1080p and 1440p Low/Medium, the Ryzen 5 7500F with its 5.00 GHz boost clock and 32 MB L3 cache is sufficient to feed the GPU, but at 4K Ultra, the GPU becomes the unequivocal bottleneck, with the 25 FPS result falling below playable thresholds. The 4K Medium result of 45 FPS, with its 38 FPS minimum, indicates that this resolution is only viable at reduced settings, and even then, frame pacing can suffer.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database's tested combinations, the Ryzen 5 7500F + RTX 4060 pairing ranks 1999th out of 3724 combos for The Medium. This places it in the 46.3rd percentile of all tested systems, meaning roughly 46% of combinations perform worse and 54% perform better. This middling rank reflects the GPU's 61st percentile standing among all GPUs, which drags down the overall potential of the 77th percentile CPU.

The combo's rank is particularly telling when compared to the individual component percentiles. The CPU's 77th percentile suggests it is a strong performer in isolation, but the GPU's 61st percentile creates a significant imbalance in this horror title. The rank of 1999 out of 3724 indicates that many systems with slower CPUs but faster GPUs will outperform this combo in The Medium, which is consistent with the resolution scaling analysis showing GPU dominance.

Interestingly, the CPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the Intel Core i7-13620H and Intel Core 5 210H, which score within 0.2% to 0.4% of the Ryzen 5 7500F's average benchmark score of 24,964. However, these mobile-oriented chips would likely pair with different GPUs in real systems, making direct in-game comparisons difficult. The GPU's nearest rivals are far older or integrated parts like the AMD Radeon HD 7790 and Radeon 780M, which underscores how the RTX 4060's 19,545 Passmark G3D score places it in a peculiar performance tier.

For a game like The Medium, which leverages fixed-camera angles and pre-baked lighting to reduce real-time rendering load, the combo's rank suggests that the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM is the primary limiter. Systems with 12 GB or 16 GB GPUs, even if slower in raw compute, could potentially achieve higher average FPS at Ultra settings due to reduced texture swapping. The 1999th rank out of 3724 combos should be interpreted as "adequate for 1080p Medium/High, but not a top-tier performer in this specific title."

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Zen 4 Raphael architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm process with 6,570 million transistors on a 71 mm² die. Its 3.70 GHz base clock and 5.00 GHz boost clock, combined with 32 MB of shared L3 cache, provide strong single-threaded performance that is crucial for The Medium's dual-reality rendering system, which often renders two perspectives simultaneously.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22,799 and a single-core score of 3,218, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 12,362 and single-core score of 2,374. These numbers indicate a processor that is roughly 77th percentile among all CPUs, with its nearest rival, the Intel Core i7-11850H, scoring within 0.1% in average benchmark scores. The 3DMark tests show scaling from 1,902 (2 threads) to 6,379 (max threads), demonstrating efficient thread utilization that benefits games using up to 12 threads.

For The Medium specifically, the CPU's role appears to be secondary given the GPU-bound nature of the title. At 1080p Low, the 108 FPS result suggests the CPU is not a bottleneck, as even a slower processor could likely achieve similar frame rates at such low graphical demand. The 5.00 GHz boost clock is particularly beneficial for the game's fixed-camera scenes, which may have lower draw call complexity than open-world titles, allowing the CPU to maintain high minimum frame rates.

The CPU's 65 W TDP and DDR5 memory support with 83.2 GB/s bandwidth provide adequate memory throughput for the game's streaming requirements. However, the fact that the combo's rank (1999th) is significantly worse than the CPU's individual percentile (77th) implies that pairing this CPU with a more powerful GPU would yield substantially better results in The Medium. The 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient for this title, as it likely does not scale beyond 8 threads effectively, but the CPU's headroom is wasted with the RTX 4060 at higher settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers its best results with an average of 108 FPS at Low settings. This drops to 68 FPS at Medium (a 37% reduction), 49 FPS at High (a 54.6% reduction from Low), and 39 FPS at Ultra (a 63.9% reduction from Low). The Medium preset's 58 FPS minimum and 78 FPS maximum show a 20 FPS variance, indicating some scene-to-scene inconsistency but generally playable performance.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset yields 91 FPS, which is 15.7% lower than 1080p Low. Medium drops to 57 FPS with a 49-66 FPS range, High falls to 41 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 32 FPS. The 1440p Medium result of 57 FPS is notable because it is only 16.2% lower than the 1080p Medium result, suggesting that the GPU's memory bandwidth (272.0 GB/s) is handling the resolution increase better than expected at mid-range settings.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal for smooth gameplay. Low settings produce 72 FPS, which is playable but represents a 33.3% drop from 1080p Low. Medium yields 45 FPS with a 38-52 FPS range, High drops to 32 FPS, and Ultra falls to just 25 FPS. The 4K Medium minimum of 38 FPS is concerning, as it indicates that demanding scenes can drop below the 40 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for a horror game, where smooth camera movement is essential for atmosphere.

The scaling from Low to Ultra across all resolutions shows a consistent pattern: Ultra settings reduce FPS by approximately 64-65% compared to Low, regardless of resolution. This suggests that the Ultra preset's additional effects (likely higher shadow quality, volumetric lighting, and post-processing) impose a fixed cost that scales with resolution, overwhelming the RTX 4060's 15.11 TFLOPS FP32 compute capability.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD107 chip, featuring 3,072 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, 48 ROPs, 24 RT cores, and 96 tensor cores. Its 1,830 MHz base clock and 2,460 MHz boost clock, combined with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yield 272.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GPU's 61st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with a Passmark G3D score of 19,545, places it in a competitive but not elite tier.

In The Medium, the GPU's role is paramount, as evidenced by the resolution scaling data. The 8 GB VRAM capacity appears to be the critical constraint at Ultra settings, where the 25 FPS result at 4K suggests the GPU is likely swapping textures to system memory, causing severe frame drops. The 128-bit memory bus, while providing adequate bandwidth for 1080p, becomes a bottleneck at higher resolutions where the fixed-camera scenes with high-detail textures require larger memory footprints.

The GPU's nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks include the AMD Radeon HD 7790 (scoring 0.2% higher) and AMD Radeon 780M (scoring 0.3% lower), which are significantly older or integrated solutions. This comparison highlights how the RTX 4060's 19,545 G3D score, while respectable, does not translate to exceptional performance in this specific title. The 15.11 TFLOPS FP32 and 118.1 GPixel/s pixel rate are sufficient for 1080p Medium/High, but the 4K Ultra result of 25 FPS indicates the GPU is overwhelmed.

The GPU's 115 W TDP and 300 W suggested PSU requirement suggest it is an efficient part, but efficiency does not compensate for the memory limitations. The 2,125 MHz memory clock (17 Gbps effective) provides 272.0 GB/s, which is far below the bandwidth of higher-tier GPUs. In The Medium's dual-reality scenes, where two views are rendered simultaneously, this bandwidth constraint likely contributes to the significant FPS drops at Ultra settings. The data indicates that the RTX 4060 is best suited for 1080p Medium/High or 1440p Medium in this game, with 4K being viable only at Low settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combo for this hardware in The Medium?

A: The data shows 1080p Medium delivers 68 FPS (58-78 FPS range), while 1440p Medium yields 57 FPS (49-66 FPS). 4K is only playable at Low settings with 72 FPS. For a balance of quality and performance, 1080p High at 49 FPS is playable, but 1440p Medium offers the best resolution-to-framerate tradeoff.

Q: Why does the 4K Ultra result of 25 FPS perform so poorly compared to 4K Low at 72 FPS?

A: The Ultra preset imposes a significant fixed cost on the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM and 128-bit memory bus. The 25 FPS result is 65.3% lower than 4K Low, indicating that the game's Ultra effects require more memory bandwidth and capacity than the GPU can provide at that resolution.

Q: How does the CPU's performance compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 7500F has an average benchmark score of 24,964, which is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core i7-11850H (24,935) and 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i7-13620H (24,911). It is 0.2% lower than the AMD Ryzen 5 8400F (25,005).

Q: Is the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM sufficient for The Medium at 1080p?

A: At 1080p Medium and High, the GPU delivers 68 FPS and 49 FPS respectively, indicating the 8 GB VRAM is adequate. However, at 1080p Ultra (39 FPS), the VRAM capacity appears to be a limiting factor, as the performance drop from High is more severe than the settings change would suggest.

Q: What does the combo's rank of 1999 out of 3724 indicate about its overall performance?

A: This rank places the combo in the middle of all tested combinations, roughly 46% from the top. Given that the CPU is in the 77th percentile and the GPU is in the 61st percentile, the rank suggests the GPU is holding back the system's potential in this specific title.

Q: Can this hardware achieve 60 FPS at 1440p in The Medium?

A: The data shows 1440p Medium averages 57 FPS with a 49 FPS minimum, so it cannot consistently maintain 60 FPS. The 1440p Low preset achieves 91 FPS, but at Medium settings, the minimum of 49 FPS falls short of the 60 FPS target.