The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER delivers a playable experience in The Medium primarily at 1080p with Medium settings, where the data shows a 57 FPS average. This configuration ranks in the 30th percentile of all tested combos (2606 out of 3724), indicating that while it is not a top-tier performer, it handles the horror title’s fixed-camera demands at mainstream resolutions. The benchmark results clearly show that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, and the CPU’s six Zen 4 cores provide sufficient headroom for the game’s DirectX 12 workload.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows indicate that the Medium preset at 1920x1080 offers the most balanced experience, delivering a 57 FPS average with a minimum of 49 FPS and a maximum of 66 FPS. This is the only settings/resolution combination in the data that provides a consistent frame rate above the 60 FPS threshold while maintaining visual fidelity above the Low preset. The Low preset at 1080p achieves 92 FPS, but the jump to Medium costs 35 FPS (a 38% reduction) in exchange for significantly better shadows and texture filtering. For players with standard 60 Hz monitors, the Medium preset is the recommended choice because it stays within the 49–66 FPS range, avoiding the sub-60 dips seen at High.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset drops to a 48 FPS average (41–55 FPS range), which is still playable but requires accepting occasional frame drops below 45 FPS during the game’s transition sequences. The High preset at 1440p is not advisable, as it falls to 35 FPS, and Ultra is outright unplayable at 27 FPS. For 4K resolution (3840x2160), the data shows that only the Low preset (61 FPS) achieves playable performance; Medium (38 FPS) and High (27 FPS) are below acceptable thresholds, while Ultra (21 FPS) is a slideshow. The verdict is clear: 1080p Medium is the sweet spot, with 1440p Medium as a viable alternative for those prioritizing resolution over settings.

GPU Role

The RTX 2060 SUPER’s 8 GB GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus (448.0 GB/s bandwidth) is the primary constraint in The Medium. The game’s high-resolution textures and volumetric effects demand memory bandwidth, and the data shows a stark performance cliff when moving from 1080p to 4K. The GPU’s boost clock of 1650 MHz and 2176 shading units provide enough raw compute for 1080p Medium, but the 7.181 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is insufficient for 4K High (27 FPS). The 34 RT cores are present but unused in this title, as The Medium does not employ ray tracing in the measured settings.

The GPU’s 62nd percentile ranking among all GPUs (average benchmark score 18093) places it just below the RTX 3060 Mobile (deltaPct -0.4) and AMD Radeon Pro 5700 (deltaPct -0.5). This positioning explains the 4K Low result: the GPU can hit 61 FPS at 4K only when texture quality is reduced to its lowest setting, which minimizes the memory bandwidth bottleneck. The 12 nm Turing architecture’s 175 W TDP and 450 W suggested PSU are adequate for the card’s role, but the data indicates that the GPU’s 8 GB VRAM is the hard ceiling—at 4K Medium, the 38 FPS average suggests the card is swapping textures, as evidenced by the wide 32–43 FPS variance.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent 35–45% performance drop when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and another 25–30% drop from 1440p to 4K, across all settings. For example, at Medium settings, the FPS progression is 57 (1080p) → 48 (1440p) → 38 (4K), representing a 33% loss from 1080p to 4K. This scaling pattern indicates that the GPU is the limiting component at all resolutions above 1080p, as a CPU-bound scenario would show minimal FPS differences between 1440p and 4K. The Low preset shows the least scaling degradation—92 FPS at 1080p, 77 at 1440p, 61 at 4K—which confirms that the GPU’s memory bandwidth is the bottleneck; reducing texture detail frees up bandwidth and allows the card to maintain higher frame rates at higher resolutions.

The Ultra preset exhibits the most severe scaling, dropping from 33 FPS at 1080p to 27 FPS at 1440p and 21 FPS at 4K. This 36% total reduction is consistent with the GPU’s 7.181 TFLOPS being overwhelmed by the game’s highest-quality shaders and post-processing. Notably, the 4K High result (27 FPS) is identical to the 1440p Ultra result (27 FPS), suggesting that the GPU hits a hard performance floor around 27 FPS when both resolution and settings stress the memory interface beyond its 448.0 GB/s capacity. The data strongly indicates that for this combo, 1080p is the only resolution where the CPU can keep up with the GPU; at 1440p and above, the RTX 2060 SUPER becomes the sole limiting factor.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 2606 out of 3724 tested configurations places it in the bottom 30% of all systems benchmarked in The Medium. This ranking is primarily dragged down by the GPU, which sits at the 62nd percentile among all GPUs, while the CPU ranks at the 77th percentile among all CPUs. The discrepancy between the two components’ percentile rankings explains the bottleneck: the Ryzen 5 8400F has more headroom than the RTX 2060 SUPER can utilize. The combo rank is notably worse than the GPU’s individual percentile (62nd) would suggest, indicating that the game is heavily GPU-bound and that the CPU’s performance advantage is wasted.

The GPU’s nearest rivals show a tight cluster around the 18000–18400 average score range, with the RTX 2060 SUPER’s 18093 average score being only 0.4% below the RTX 3060 Mobile (18159) and 1.5% below the AMD Radeon RX 460 (18373). This suggests that the RTX 2060 SUPER is positioned at the lower end of its performance class, which aligns with the combo’s 2606 rank. In contrast, the CPU’s nearest rivals—the Ryzen 5 7500F (0.2% higher), Core i7-11850H (0.3% higher), and Core i7-13620H (0.4% higher)—are all within 0.4% of the 8400F’s 25005 average score, indicating that the CPU is not the differentiator in this combo’s ranking. The data implies that swapping the GPU for a higher-tier card would improve the combo rank substantially, while upgrading the CPU would yield negligible gains in this game.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 8400F’s six cores and twelve threads (Zen 4, Phoenix architecture) operating at a 4.70 GHz boost clock provide ample processing power for The Medium, which is not a heavily threaded title. The CPU’s 16 MB shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth are more than sufficient for the game’s streaming requirements, as evidenced by the 1080p Low result of 92 FPS—a frame rate that approaches the GPU’s practical limit. The CPU’s 77th percentile ranking (average benchmark score 25005) places it in the upper quartile of all processors, and its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20851 confirms strong multi-threaded performance.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role is largely confined to maintaining frame pacing and handling the game’s AI-driven camera transitions. The measured FPS data shows that at 1080p Low (92 FPS), the CPU is not the bottleneck, as the GPU is still able to render frames quickly. However, at 1080p Ultra (33 FPS), the CPU is clearly not the limiting factor—the GPU is. The CPU’s 3DMark single-thread score of 951 and Passmark single-thread score of 3685 indicate good single-core performance, which is critical for the game’s main thread. The 8400F’s nearest rival, the Ryzen 5 7500F, scores within 0.2% on average, confirming that the 8400F’s clock speed advantage (4.70 GHz vs the 7500F’s comparable boost) provides no meaningful edge in this game. The CPU’s 65 W TDP and AM5 socket support DDR5 memory, which contributes to the 83.2 GB/s bandwidth—a resource the GPU does not need beyond 1080p.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080: The data shows a clear progression across settings. Low delivers 92 FPS average, representing the best-case scenario for high refresh rate displays. Medium drops to 57 FPS (49–66 FPS range), which is the only 1080p preset that maintains a playable minimum above 45 FPS. High falls to 41 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 33 FPS. The 59 FPS spread between Low and Ultra highlights the GPU’s sensitivity to texture quality and shadow resolution at this resolution.

2560x1440: Low remains the only preset above 60 FPS, achieving 77 FPS. Medium drops to 48 FPS (41–55 FPS), which is borderline playable but shows a 9 FPS reduction from the 1080p Medium result. High falls to 35 FPS, and Ultra reaches 27 FPS. The 1440p results show a consistent 15–20% FPS penalty compared to 1080p across all settings, indicating that the GPU’s 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is being taxed by the increased pixel count.

3840x2160: Low is the sole playable preset at 61 FPS. Medium drops to 38 FPS (32–43 FPS range), which exhibits the widest variance of any measured configuration, suggesting memory pressure. High falls to 27 FPS, and Ultra reaches 21 FPS. The 4K results demonstrate that this combo is only viable at the lowest quality setting; the 40 FPS difference between Low and Ultra at 4K is the largest across all resolutions, reinforcing the GPU’s memory bandwidth as the definitive bottleneck. The data shows no configuration exceeds 92 FPS, and the only 60+ FPS results occur at Low settings in 1080p and 1440p, plus Low at 4K.