The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination ranks 427th out of 1,689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the upper quartile of all systems evaluated. This positioning reflects a balanced pairing where the CPU’s 85th percentile standing among all processors and the GPU’s 81st percentile among all graphics cards align closely, preventing either component from becoming a dominant bottleneck in this horror title. The combo’s rank suggests it outperforms roughly 75% of tested configurations, though it sits below the top tier where flagship GPUs paired with flagship CPUs dominate the leaderboard.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 brings 12 GB of GDDR6X memory across a 192-bit bus, delivering 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. Its Ada Lovelace architecture, built on TSMC’s 5 nm process, contains 5,888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output pipelines. The card operates at a 1,920 MHz base clock and boosts to 2,475 MHz, with memory running at 1,313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). These specifications translate to a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 29.15 TFLOPS.

In The Medium, the GPU’s role becomes increasingly critical as settings rise. At 1080p High, the combo produces 68.8 FPS average, which climbs to 147.5 FPS at Low settings. The 12 GB VRAM capacity proves sufficient across all tested configurations, as the game does not appear to exceed this allocation at any resolution or quality preset. The RTX 4070’s 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores support the game’s horror atmosphere, though the measured FPS data does not isolate ray tracing performance specifically.

Comparing the RTX 4070 to its nearest rivals in the database, the GPU’s average benchmark score of 37,283 sits within 0.6% of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37,507), showing near-parity in synthetic tests. It trails the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A by 1.9% and the RTX 4080 Mobile by 2.2%, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 5300M by 2.5%. These narrow margins indicate that in raw compute terms, the RTX 4070 occupies a tightly contested performance band, though its modern feature set and driver optimization may yield different results in actual gameplay.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals how the balance between CPU and GPU shifts as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 147.5 FPS, while 1440p Low drops to 125.4 FPS (a 15% reduction), and 4K Low falls to 98.8 FPS (a 33% reduction from 1080p). This pattern suggests that at lower settings, the CPU maintains a strong frame delivery, with the GPU becoming more influential as pixel count grows.

Moving to High settings, the scaling becomes more pronounced: 1080p High delivers 68.8 FPS, 1440p High drops to 57.4 FPS (a 16.6% decrease), and 4K High reaches 45.2 FPS (a 34.3% decrease from 1080p). The Ultra preset shows the steepest curve, with 54.3 FPS at 1080p, 43.2 FPS at 1440p (a 20.4% drop), and 35 FPS at 4K (a 35.5% drop). These diminishing returns indicate that the RTX 4070 becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, particularly under Ultra settings where 4K performance falls below the 60 FPS threshold.

The Medium preset tells a similar story: 91.7 FPS at 1080p, 77.2 FPS at 1440p, and 62.2 FPS at 4K. The consistent 30-35% performance loss moving from 1080p to 4K across all settings points to a GPU-bound scenario at higher resolutions, while the smaller gaps between 1080p and 1440p (15-20%) suggest the CPU still contributes meaningfully at the lower resolution. This data implies that users targeting 4K should expect playable but not fluid frame rates, especially on Ultra where 35 FPS may struggle to maintain smooth motion.

FAQ

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested systems in The Medium?

A: The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X + RTX 4070 combination ranks 427th out of 1,689 tested combos, placing it in the top 25% of all configurations evaluated for this game.

Q: What is the best performance this combo achieves at 1080p?

A: At 1080p with Low settings, the combo reaches 147.5 FPS average, while High settings produce 68.8 FPS, Medium delivers 91.7 FPS, and Ultra drops to 54.3 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 4070’s 12 GB VRAM sufficient for The Medium at 4K?

A: The 12 GB GDDR6X memory with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth appears adequate, as the game runs at 45.2 FPS on High and 35 FPS on Ultra at 4K, with no indication of VRAM limitations in the measured data.

Q: How does the RTX 4070 compare to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 4070’s average benchmark score of 37,283 is 0.6% below the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, 1.9% below the NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A, and 2.2% below the RTX 4080 Mobile, while leading the AMD Radeon RX 5300M by 2.5%.

Q: What FPS can users expect at 1440p with High settings?

A: At 2560x1440 with High settings, the combo produces 57.4 FPS average, which is 16.6% lower than the 68.8 FPS achieved at 1080p High, indicating the GPU begins to assert more influence at this resolution.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance more in this game?

A: The data shows that at 1080p Low, the combo delivers 147.5 FPS, suggesting strong CPU performance, but the 34-35% FPS drop from 1080p to 4K across all settings indicates the GPU becomes the primary limiter at higher resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) using TSMC’s 4 nm process, provides 6 cores and 12 threads with a 3.90 GHz base clock and 5.40 GHz boost clock. Its 65W TDP and unlocked multiplier allow for overclocking, while the AM5 socket supports DDR5 memory with dual-channel configuration and 89.6 GB/s bandwidth. The CPU includes 80 KB L1 cache per core, 1 MB L2 per core, and 32 MB shared L3 cache, totaling 8,315 million transistors on a 70.6 mm² die.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9600X scores 25,525 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 3,603 in single-core, with Geekbench results of 15,182 multi-core and 3,363 single-core. Its PassMark multi-thread score of 30,027 and single-thread score of 4,570 demonstrate strong per-core performance, which benefits games like The Medium that may not fully utilize all threads. The CPU’s 3DMark scores show scaling from 2,456 (2 threads) to 7,590 (max threads), indicating reasonable multi-thread scaling but with diminishing returns beyond 8 threads (6,726).

The 9600X’s average benchmark score of 28,246 places it at the 85th percentile among all CPUs, with nearest rivals including the Intel Core i5-13490F (28,173, 0.3% lower), AMD Ryzen 5 230 (28,164, 0.3% lower), AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (28,369, 0.4% higher), and Intel Core i5-14500T (28,377, 0.5% higher). These margins are negligible, indicating the 9600X sits in a dense performance cluster where system configuration and cooling may determine real-world outcomes.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role appears most significant at lower resolutions and settings. At 1080p Low, the 147.5 FPS result suggests the 9600X can feed the RTX 4070 adequately, but the 68.8 FPS at 1080p High and 54.3 FPS at Ultra indicate that GPU demands increase faster than CPU limitations emerge. The 6-core/12-thread configuration with high single-thread performance (3,603 in Cinebench R23 single-core) likely handles the game’s logical threads efficiently, though the 12-thread count may limit performance in heavily multi-threaded sections. The CPU’s 85th percentile ranking, paired with the GPU’s 81st percentile, creates a well-matched system where neither component dramatically overshadows the other in this title.