The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F and AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT combination delivers a playable experience in The Medium only when settings are managed carefully, with the data showing a clear preference for Low presets across most resolutions. This pairing lands in the 1255th position out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the lower half of the performance distribution, but it remains viable for 1080p gaming with specific adjustments.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data indicates that the Medium preset is the sweet spot for this hardware at 1080p, delivering 57.9 FPS average. This provides a stable frame rate that is well above the 30 FPS threshold typically needed for a playable horror experience, while retaining more visual fidelity than the Low preset. At 1440p, the Medium preset drops to 47.3 FPS, which is still acceptable for slower-paced gameplay, but the High preset at 37 FPS becomes marginal. For 4K resolution, the Low preset is the only viable option, producing 59.6 FPS, which is remarkable given the GPU’s age.

The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution. At 1080p, it yields only 30.3 FPS, which is borderline playable but likely to feel unstable. At 1440p, Ultra falls to 27.9 FPS, and at 4K, it plummets to 21.3 FPS, making it effectively unplayable. The High preset offers a middle ground but struggles at higher resolutions. For the best balance of visual quality and performance, data suggests using Medium at 1080p or 1440p, and Low at 4K. This pattern highlights that the GPU is the primary bottleneck, as the CPU has sufficient headroom to handle the game’s demands.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is a critical factor in The Medium, which is known for its streaming-heavy environments. The GPU’s base clock of 1605 MHz and boost clock of 1905 MHz, with a game clock of 1755 MHz, determine its raw compute throughput. The card features 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 raster operations pipelines, delivering a pixel rate of 121.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 304.8 GTexel/s.

The performance data shows that the GPU is the limiting component in this combo. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Medium settings is 31.5 FPS (89.4 vs 57.9), while the jump from Medium to High is a smaller 17.8 FPS drop (57.9 to 40.1). This indicates that the GPU struggles with the increased shading and texture loads at higher presets. The 4K results reinforce this: the GPU can manage 59.6 FPS on Low, but this falls to 37 FPS on Medium, a 38% reduction. The card’s 7 nm process and RDNA 1.0 architecture, while dated, still provide enough compute for modest settings, but the 8 GB VRAM capacity appears sufficient for this title at lower presets, as the frame rates degrade more from shading workload than memory overflow.

How This Combo Ranks

This configuration ranks 1255th out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the 74th percentile of all tested systems. This means that roughly a quarter of the tested combos perform worse, while the majority offer higher frame rates. The ranking reflects the GPU’s age; the RX 5700 XT sits at the 68th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the Ryzen 5 8400F ranks at the 82nd percentile among all CPUs. The disparity between these two percentile scores explains why the combo underperforms: the CPU is capable, but the GPU holds the system back.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU’s average score of 25064 places it in close competition with the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, which scores 25057, a 0% delta. The GPU’s average score of 24731 is nearly identical to the NVIDIA RTX A5000 Mobile at 24763, a -0.1% delta. These synthetic scores suggest a balanced pairing on paper, but the game-specific data reveals the GPU’s limitations under sustained load. The combo’s rank suggests that for this specific title, many other pairings with newer GPUs or more balanced configurations will deliver smoother experiences.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?*

A: The data shows that 1080p is the most reliable resolution, with the Medium preset delivering 57.9 FPS. At 1440p, the same preset yields 47.3 FPS, which is playable, while 4K requires the Low preset for 59.6 FPS.

Q: Can this system handle the Ultra preset?

A: No, the Ultra preset is not viable. At 1080p it produces only 30.3 FPS, at 1440p it drops to 27.9 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 21.3 FPS, all below comfortable playability thresholds.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this game?

A: The GPU is the primary bottleneck. The Ryzen 5 8400F has 6 cores and 12 threads with a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, ranking at the 82nd percentile, while the RX 5700 XT ranks at the 68th percentile, showing a clear performance gap.

Q: How much does lowering settings from High to Low improve performance?

A: The improvement is substantial. At 1080p, Low delivers 89.4 FPS versus 40.1 FPS on High, a 122% increase. At 1440p, the gain is from 37 FPS to 73.9 FPS, and at 4K from 28.5 FPS to 59.6 FPS.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested systems?

A: It ranks 1255th out of 1689 combos, meaning it performs better than about 25% of tested systems. The CPU’s synthetic score of 25064 is nearly identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, but the GPU’s age limits overall game performance.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between 1080p and 4K on Medium settings?

A: At 1080p Medium, the average FPS is 57.9, while at 4K Medium it drops to 37 FPS, a reduction of 20.9 FPS or 36%. This shows the GPU’s inability to maintain performance at higher pixel counts.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data reveals a steep performance drop as resolution increases, confirming that the GPU is heavily taxed by pixel count. On Medium settings, the frame rate falls from 57.9 FPS at 1080p to 47.3 FPS at 1440p, a 10.6 FPS decrease, and then to 37 FPS at 4K, another 10.3 FPS drop. This linear degradation suggests that the GPU’s fill rate and memory bandwidth are being saturated. The Low preset shows a different pattern: 89.4 FPS at 1080p drops to 73.9 FPS at 1440p, but only falls to 59.6 FPS at 4K. The smaller relative drop at 4K on Low indicates that the CPU is able to keep feeding frames, but the GPU’s shading units are the limiting factor.

The scaling from 1080p to 4K on Medium represents a 36% performance loss, which is significant. This is not a case of CPU limitation; if the CPU were the bottleneck, the frame rates would stay more consistent across resolutions. Instead, the 4K results show that the RX 5700 XT’s 9.754 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient for the increased pixel workload. The data suggests that users with 1440p monitors should stick to Medium or Low, while 4K users must accept Low settings for a smooth experience.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F features 6 cores and 12 threads, based on the Zen 4 architecture with a Phoenix codename. Its base clock of 4.20 GHz and boost clock of 4.70 GHz, combined with 16 MB of shared L3 cache, provide strong single-threaded performance. The CPU’s synthetic benchmarks are impressive: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20851 and a single-core score of 2943. The PassMark single-thread score of 3684 further confirms its capability.

In The Medium, the CPU does not appear to be the limiting factor. The game is a horror title that relies on fixed camera angles and pre-rendered environments, which are typically less CPU-intensive than open-world titles. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 6091 and max-thread score of 6165 indicate that the 12 threads are sufficient for this game’s multi-threaded workloads. The CPU’s 82nd percentile ranking and its average benchmark score of 25064, which is nearly identical to the AMD EPYC 9474F (25103, -0.2% delta), demonstrate that it has ample headroom. The low preset at 1080p achieving 89.4 FPS suggests that the CPU can push frames well above 60 FPS, but the GPU cannot keep up at higher settings. Therefore, upgrading the GPU would yield far greater performance gains than upgrading the CPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the data shows a wide spread across settings. The Low preset achieves 89.4 FPS, which is excellent for a smooth experience. Medium drops to 57.9 FPS, still acceptable for most players. High falls to 40.1 FPS, which may cause noticeable stutters in intense scenes. Ultra is the worst at 30.3 FPS, barely hitting the 30 FPS minimum for playability.

At 1440p, the frame rates scale down predictably. Low delivers 73.9 FPS, a strong result for this resolution. Medium produces 47.3 FPS, which is playable but requires some compromise. High drops to 37 FPS, and Ultra falls to 27.9 FPS, both of which are below the ideal threshold for a smooth horror experience.

At 4K, the GPU is clearly overworked. Low settings yield 59.6 FPS, which is surprisingly playable. Medium drops to 37 FPS, High to 28.5 FPS, and Ultra to 21.3 FPS. These numbers highlight that the RX 5700 XT can handle 4K only on the lowest preset, and even then, the frame rate is borderline. The overall pattern across all resolutions confirms that the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for Low and Medium, but the 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs struggle with higher-quality textures and effects.