The Medium

# The Medium with AMD Ryzen 5 7600 + AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

The pairing of AMD's six-core Ryzen 5 7600 with the Radeon RX 5700 XT presents a curious study in bottleneck dynamics for The Medium. The data shows a GPU that was already end-of-life by the time this horror title shipped, paired with a modern CPU that sits in the 78th percentile among all tested processors. The measured FPS across resolutions and settings tells a story of a system that can handle the game's demands at lower presets, but struggles when pushed toward visual fidelity at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K are dramatic and reveal exactly where the limiting component lies. At Low settings, the average FPS falls from 89 at 1920x1080 to 75 at 2560x1440, then to 59 at 3840x2160. That represents a 16% decline from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 21% decline to 4K. The scaling is relatively smooth, suggesting the GPU is doing the heavy lifting even at Low settings.

At Medium settings, the pattern shifts. The 1080p result of 56 FPS drops to 47 at 1440p (a 16% decline), then to 37 at 4K (a 21% decline from 1440p). The min FPS at Medium tells a more detailed story: 48 at 1080p, 40 at 1440p, and 31 at 4K. These minimums are within 17 FPS of each other across all three resolutions, indicating that while average performance degrades predictably, the worst-case frames are relatively stable.

High settings show the most severe penalty. The 40 FPS at 1080p falls to 34 at 1440p (15% drop), then to 26 at 4K (24% drop from 1440p). The scaling from 1440p to 4K becomes steeper here, suggesting the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading resources are being stretched thin. Ultra settings are harshest: 32 FPS at 1080p, 27 at 1440p, and 21 at 4K. The 1080p-to-4K drop of 11 FPS represents a 34% reduction, showing that Ultra presets amplify resolution sensitivity.

The implication is clear: this is a GPU-limited configuration. The Ryzen 5 7600, with its 6 cores and 12 threads boosting to 5.10 GHz, is not the constraint. The RX 5700 XT's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth becomes the wall, particularly as resolution increases and texture memory demands grow.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear hierarchy for playable configurations. At 1080p, Low settings deliver 89 FPS, which is the highest measured result in the entire dataset. Medium at 1080p drops to 56 FPS, still comfortably above the 30 FPS threshold for playability, with a minimum of 48 FPS. High at 1080p yields 40 FPS, and Ultra drops to 32 FPS.

For 1440p, the situation becomes more constrained. Low settings maintain 75 FPS, which remains strong. Medium drops to 47 FPS with a 40 FPS minimum, still playable but with less headroom. High at 34 FPS and Ultra at 27 FPS fall below the 40 FPS threshold that many players find acceptable for a horror title.

At 4K, only Low settings remain viable at 59 FPS. Medium falls to 37 FPS with a 31 FPS minimum, which is borderline. High at 26 FPS and Ultra at 21 FPS are not playable by any reasonable standard.

The best experience per the measured rows appears to be Medium at 1080p. It provides 56 FPS average with a 48 FPS minimum, which is 8 FPS above the Low setting's minimum of 40 FPS at 1440p. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 33 FPS (from 89 to 56), but the visual quality improvement is substantial. Alternatively, Low at 1440p at 75 FPS offers a higher resolution with better frame pacing than Medium at 1080p, but the 56 FPS at Medium 1080p is likely the sweet spot for maintaining both quality and smoothness.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo run The Medium at 4K?

A: Only at Low settings, where the average FPS is 59. Medium at 4K drops to 37 FPS with a 31 FPS minimum, and High/Ultra fall to 26 and 21 FPS respectively, which are not playable.

Q: What is the best resolution for this pairing?

A: The data shows 1080p provides the most headroom. Low settings hit 89 FPS, Medium achieves 56 FPS with a 48 FPS minimum, and even Ultra maintains 32 FPS. At 1440p, only Low (75 FPS) and Medium (47 FPS) stay above 40 FPS.

Q: How does the Ultra preset compare to High?

A: At every resolution, Ultra is significantly slower. At 1080p, Ultra is 8 FPS slower than High (32 vs 40). At 1440p, the gap is 7 FPS (27 vs 34). At 4K, it's 5 FPS (21 vs 26). The cost of Ultra is consistent but steep.

Q: Is there a large difference between Low and Medium settings?

A: Yes. At 1080p, Low delivers 89 FPS while Medium drops to 56 FPS, a 33 FPS gap. At 1440p, the gap is 28 FPS (75 vs 47). At 4K, it narrows to 22 FPS (59 vs 37). The visual quality jump from Low to Medium is substantial, but so is the performance cost.

Q: What minimum FPS can I expect at Medium settings?

A: The measured minimums are 48 FPS at 1080p, 40 FPS at 1440p, and 31 FPS at 4K. These represent the worst-case frames during the benchmark run, and all three are above the 30 FPS playability threshold except 4K, which is borderline.

Q: Does this combo rank well among tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 2776 out of 3724 tested combinations for this game, placing it in the lower 25% of all tested combos. This is consistent with the GPU's 59th percentile ranking among all GPUs.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame places this configuration at 2776 out of 3724 tested combos. That puts it in the bottom 25% of all tested systems for The Medium, which is a poor showing for a horror game that relies on atmosphere and pacing. The Ryzen 5 7600's CPU benchmarks are strong — it sits at the 78th percentile among all CPUs with an average benchmark score of 26324 — but the GPU holds the system back.

The GPU's percentileVsAllGpus of 59 means it outperforms just over half of all tested GPUs, yet it ranks near the bottom for this specific game. This suggests The Medium is particularly demanding on GPU resources, likely due to its fixed camera angles and complex lighting that require sustained shader work. The RX 5700 XT's RDNA 1.0 architecture, while capable, lacks the ray tracing acceleration that newer architectures offer, and The Medium's visual design may lean heavily on such features.

Compared to the CPU's nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 7600 is within 0.5% of the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS, Intel Core i9-11900KF, and AMD Ryzen 5 8540U. This tight cluster means the CPU is not a differentiator in this combo. The GPU's nearest rivals — AMD Radeon Pro 5600M, NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, AMD Radeon PRO W7500, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D V2 — have average scores within 0.9% of the RX 5700 XT, but those are synthetic benchmarks. In The Medium specifically, the measured FPS reveals the real-world performance ceiling.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT carries 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock of 1605 MHz boosts to 1905 MHz, with a game clock rated at 1755 MHz. The memory runs at 1750 MHz, which translates to 14 Gbps effective. These specifications place it in the 59th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 16361.

In The Medium, the GPU's role is decisive. The measured FPS at 4K High (26 FPS) and 4K Ultra (21 FPS) are unplayable, while 4K Low (59 FPS) is smooth. This wide spread across settings indicates that the GPU's 8 GB frame buffer and 2560 shading units are the primary constraint. The 64 ROPs and 160 TMUs provide a texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 121.9 GPixel/s, but these are insufficient for the game's higher presets at high resolutions.

The FP32 throughput of 9.754 TFLOPS, with FP16 at 19.51 TFLOPS, gives some compute headroom, but the game appears to be memory-bandwidth sensitive. The drop from Low to Medium at 1080p (89 to 56 FPS) is a 37% reduction, suggesting that the Medium preset activates significant memory traffic increases. The 4K Medium result of 37 FPS confirms that the 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is simply not enough for high-resolution, high-quality rendering in this title.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The full dataset provides a complete picture. At 1920x1080: Low averages 89 FPS, Medium averages 56 FPS with a minimum of 48 and maximum of 64, High averages 40 FPS, and Ultra averages 32 FPS. At 2560x1440: Low averages 75 FPS, Medium averages 47 FPS with a minimum of 40 and maximum of 54, High averages 34 FPS, and Ultra averages 27 FPS. At 3840x2160: Low averages 59 FPS, Medium averages 37 FPS with a minimum of 31 and maximum of 43, High averages 26 FPS, and Ultra averages 21 FPS.

The Medium settings are the only preset with min and max FPS values recorded across all resolutions, providing insight into frame pacing. At 1080p, the range is 48 to 64 FPS, a spread of 16 FPS. At 1440p, the range is 40 to 54, also 14 FPS. At 4K, the range narrows to 31 to 43, just 12 FPS. This tightening range at higher resolutions suggests the GPU becomes more consistently saturated, reducing variability but also reducing average performance.

The ratio of Low to Ultra at each resolution reveals the performance cost of quality. At 1080p, Ultra delivers 36% of Low's FPS (32 vs 89). At 1440p, Ultra delivers 36% of Low (27 vs 75). At 4K, Ultra delivers 36% of Low (21 vs 59). This consistency across resolutions indicates the settings scaling is resolution-independent, a hallmark of a GPU-bound scenario where the same relative workload increases apply at each pixel count.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600 is a 6-core, 12-thread processor from the 7000 series, based on Zen 4 architecture (codenamed Raphael) on TSMC's 5 nm process. It has a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 5.10 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB L1 per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 32 MB shared L3. Memory support is DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and 83.2 GB/s bandwidth. It uses PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes.

In synthetic benchmarks, this CPU scores 999 in 3DMark single-thread, 6499 in 3DMark 16-thread, and 6503 in max-thread. Cinebench R23 results are 1852 single-core and 12735 multi-core. Geekbench scores are 2521 single-core and 13413 multi-core. PassMark single-thread is 3910 and multithread is 27058. These numbers place it at the 78th percentile among all CPUs.

Despite this strong CPU performance, The Medium's measured FPS never exceeds 89 at any resolution or setting, and the scaling from Low to Ultra is consistent regardless of resolution. This indicates the game is not CPU-bound in this configuration. Even at 1080p Low, where the GPU has the least work, the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads are sufficient to keep frames flowing. The 5.10 GHz boost clock provides strong single-thread performance, which is often critical for game logic and draw calls, but the data shows no CPU bottleneck emerging at any measured point.

The Ryzen 5 7600's nearest CPU rivals — the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS, Intel Core i9-11900KF, and AMD Ryzen 5 8540U — all have average benchmark scores within 0.5% of this chip. This clustering means any of these CPUs would likely produce identical FPS results in The Medium when paired with the RX 5700 XT. The GPU remains the sole determinant of performance in this pairing, and the CPU's job is simply to stay out of the way.