The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT combination sits at rank 1052 out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. That places this pairing in the lower-middle portion of the database, a position that reflects a significant GPU bottleneck at higher settings rather than any CPU limitation. The Ryzen 5 9600X is a strong processor—its average benchmark score of 28246 puts it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs—but the RX 7600 XT, while capable, lands in the 63rd percentile of all GPUs with an average score of 20146. The data suggests this is a pairing where the graphics card dictates the experience, and the CPU's headroom goes largely unused in this particular title.

The Ryzen 5 9600X shows clear dominance over its nearest rivals in synthetic tests, which matters for understanding why the CPU is not the constraint here. It edges out the Intel Core i5-13490F by 0.3% and the AMD Ryzen 5 230 by 0.3% in average score, while also surpassing the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS by 0.4% and the Intel Core i5-14500T by 0.5%. These margins are narrow but consistent, and the CPU's single-threaded strength—evidenced by a 3dmark_single_thread score of 1253 and a Geekbench single-core score of 3363—ensures that even demanding frame-time spikes in horror sequences are unlikely to be CPU-bound. The GPU, however, tells a different story; the RX 7600 XT is essentially tied with the AMD Radeon RX 460 (0.3% ahead) and slightly behind the AMD Radeon RX 7600 by 0.6%, while outperforming the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER by 1.9% and trailing the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile by 1.9%. This is a mid-range card, and the benchmark results reflect that positioning.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 7600 XT brings 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That memory capacity is generous for a card in this class, but the bandwidth figure is modest, and The Medium's measured frames suggest that memory throughput is not the primary lever. The GPU's clocks are more telling: a base of 1980 MHz and a boost of 2755 MHz, with a game clock of 2470 MHz. The card's 22.57 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and 352.6 GTexel/s texture rate are respectable, but the 64 ROPs and 2048 shading units are the real limiters when the game's fixed-function work scales with resolution.

In this title, the GPU's role is decisive. At 1080p Ultra, the combo produces 34.1 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS threshold most players expect, and the situation worsens dramatically at 4K Ultra, where the average falls to 20.9 FPS. The card's 32 ray tracing cores are present, but The Medium is not a ray tracing showcase, and the data shows that raw rasterization throughput is what matters. The 16 GB VRAM is never a constraint at these settings—even at 4K Ultra, the game's memory footprint stays within that limit—so the bottleneck is purely the GPU's compute and fillrate capacity. The RX 7600 XT's nearest rival, the RX 7600, is only 0.6% faster on average, which explains why the two cards would perform nearly identically in this game; the extra 8 GB of VRAM on the XT model does not translate into higher frame rates here.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic GPU-bound pattern. At Low settings, the combo moves from 95.8 FPS at 1080p to 83.1 FPS at 1440p to 62.7 FPS at 4K—a drop of 13.3% from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 24.6% from 1440p to 4K. That is a relatively gentle curve for a GPU-limited scenario, indicating that even at Low settings, the CPU is not holding things back; if it were, the 4K figure would not decline so smoothly. The High settings tell a more aggressive story: 43.3 FPS at 1080p, 38.6 FPS at 1440p, and 27.9 FPS at 4K. The 1440p to 4K drop here is 27.7%, which is steeper than the Low preset's decline, showing that the GPU's shading units and ROPs are being saturated as pixel count rises.

The Medium preset shows the most linear scaling: 60.5 FPS at 1080p, 52.8 FPS at 1440p, and 41.7 FPS at 4K. That is a 30.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K, a figure that aligns with what one would expect from a card with 64 ROPs when pixel throughput becomes the dominant cost. Ultra settings are the harshest: 34.1 FPS at 1080p, 29.4 FPS at 1440p, and 20.9 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop is only 13.8%, but the 1440p to 4K plunge is 28.9%, meaning the card hits a wall as the resolution climbs. Across all presets, the limiting component is unambiguous: the CPU's 6 cores and 12 threads, running at up to 5.40 GHz boost, are never the issue. The Ryzen 5 9600X's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25525 and single-core score of 3603 confirm it has ample headroom, and the measured frames show that headroom going unused.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 95.8 FPS on Low, 60.5 FPS on Medium, 43.3 FPS on High, and 34.1 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a substantial 36.9% performance hit, while the Medium to High drop is 28.4%, and High to Ultra is another 21.3%. These are large penalties for each quality tier, indicating that The Medium's settings have a profound impact on the GPU's workload. At 1080p, only the Low preset exceeds 60 FPS, and even Medium just barely clears that bar; High and Ultra fall well short of a smooth experience on a standard 60 Hz monitor.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers are 83.1 FPS on Low, 52.8 FPS on Medium, 38.6 FPS on High, and 29.4 FPS on Ultra. The Low preset remains playable, but Medium drops below the 60 FPS threshold, and the higher presets become increasingly marginal. The 1440p Medium figure of 52.8 FPS is 12.7% lower than the 1080p Medium result, while 1440p High is 10.9% lower than its 1080p counterpart. At 3840x2160, the story is stark: 62.7 FPS on Low, 41.7 FPS on Medium, 27.9 FPS on High, and 20.9 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Low result is the only one that approaches playability, and it does so only because the Low preset drastically reduces the shading and texture work. The 4K Ultra figure of 20.9 FPS is effectively a slideshow, and even 4K Medium cannot hold 30 FPS, coming in at 41.7 FPS.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to a clear hierarchy for this combo. For a 1080p display, the Medium preset at 60.5 FPS is the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate, since Low at 95.8 FPS leaves performance on the table while High at 43.3 FPS sacrifices smoothness for marginal quality gains. At 1440p, the Medium preset drops to 52.8 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target but still playable for a slower-paced horror title; Low at 83.1 FPS is the only preset that guarantees a fluid experience, but it does so at a significant visual cost. For 4K, the options are limited: Low at 62.7 FPS is the only preset that clears 60 FPS, while Medium at 41.7 FPS is a compromise that sacrifices frame rate for better image quality.

Given that The Medium is a horror game where atmosphere matters more than competitive frame rates, the data supports choosing Medium at 1080p or 1440p as the sweet spot, provided the user can tolerate frame rates in the 50-60 FPS range. At 4K, users should stick to Low to avoid the sub-30 FPS territory that High and Ultra occupy. The combo's rank of 1052 out of 1689 reflects this reality: it is not a high-end pairing, and the GPU's 16 GB VRAM does not rescue it from the compute limits that surface at higher settings. The Ryzen 5 9600X is a more capable component than the RX 7600 XT, and the benchmark results show that the CPU's 85th percentile standing is irrelevant to this game's performance—the GPU is the ceiling, and the measured FPS values are the floor.