The Medium

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti produces a highly variable experience in The Medium, with performance swinging dramatically based on resolution and quality preset. The measured data shows a system capable of smooth 4K play at medium settings, but one that struggles to maintain high refresh rates at 1080p on ultra. The following analysis breaks down the measured FPS data to interpret what these numbers mean for the limiting component, settings choices, and the roles of the CPU and GPU.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS data reveals a clear pattern of GPU-bound scaling as resolution increases, but with a notable exception that points to a CPU limitation at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the average frame rate drops from 175 FPS on Low to 79 FPS on High, a steep 55% reduction. When moving to 2560x1440, the same settings yield 148 FPS and 66 FPS respectively, showing a further 15-16% performance hit from the resolution increase. At 4K, the averages fall to 116 FPS and 52 FPS, representing another 22-21% drop from 1440p.

The scaling pattern from 1440p to 4K is consistent with a GPU-bound workload, where the RTX 4070 Ti's rendering throughput is the primary constraint. However, the jump from 1080p to 1440p is smaller than expected, suggesting that at 1080p, the Ryzen 5 9600X's six cores are beginning to limit the frame rate. This is most evident in the Low preset: 175 FPS at 1080p versus 148 FPS at 1440p is only a 15% difference, while the 1440p to 4K transition (148 to 116 FPS) is a 22% difference. The CPU is likely capping the maximum achievable frame rate at lower resolutions, preventing the GPU from fully stretching its legs.

At Medium settings, the trend is more uniform. The 110 FPS at 1080p drops to 92 FPS at 1440p (a 16% decrease), and then to 73 FPS at 4K (a 21% decrease). This suggests that the Medium preset provides a more balanced load, where neither component is completely saturated. The Ultra preset tells a different story: 62 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p, and 41 FPS at 4K. The scaling here is nearly linear with resolution, strongly indicating that the GPU is the sole bottleneck under maximum quality settings.

The 4K data is particularly telling. At 4K Ultra, the system manages just 41 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay. Dropping to 4K High improves this to 52 FPS, still short of 60. Only by dropping to 4K Medium does the system reach a playable 73 FPS, and 4K Low delivers 116 FPS. This wide spread—from 41 to 116 FPS at the same resolution—demonstrates that the RTX 4070 Ti's 12 GB of VRAM and 504.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth are sufficient for the game, but the sheer rendering load at 4K on higher presets exceeds the GPU's capabilities.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data suggests that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium produces 110 FPS with a minimum of 93 FPS, ensuring a consistently smooth experience on high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset drops to 79 FPS, which is still playable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes. The Ultra preset at 62 FPS is borderline, and the lack of a reported minimum FPS suggests potential frame time spikes.

For 2560x1440, Medium is again the sweet spot with 92 FPS (minimum 79 FPS). This is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold and provides a good margin for dips. High at 66 FPS is acceptable for slower-paced horror gameplay, but the 52 FPS average on Ultra is likely to feel stuttery in action sequences. The 148 FPS on Low is excessive for a game like The Medium, which prioritizes atmosphere over competitive responsiveness, so the visual fidelity loss is not worth the extra frames.

At 3840x2160, the choice is more constrained. Medium is the only preset that maintains an average above 60 FPS, hitting 73 FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS. High at 52 FPS and Ultra at 41 FPS will both struggle to maintain consistent motion, making Medium the recommended setting for 4K displays. The 116 FPS on Low is technically smooth but sacrifices the game's detailed environments, which are a core part of the horror experience.

The data shows a clear diminishing return on quality beyond Medium. The jump from Medium to High costs 28% of the frame rate at 1080p (110 to 79 FPS), while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 21% (79 to 62 FPS). Given that The Medium is a slow, story-driven horror title, the visual improvements from High to Ultra are less impactful than the frame rate loss. The measured minimum FPS values for Medium (93, 79, and 62 at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K respectively) indicate that this preset provides the most stable experience, with the 4K minimum of 62 FPS staying just above the 60 FPS threshold.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a six-core, twelve-thread processor based on the Zen 5 architecture, codenamed Granite Ridge. It features a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU's benchmark results show strong single-thread performance, scoring 2183.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 2923 in Geekbench single-core. Its multi-threaded scores are also respectable, with a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 17528.5 and a Geekbench multi-core score of 14438.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's role is most apparent at lower resolutions and settings. The 1080p Low result of 175 FPS is likely near the CPU's maximum frame generation capability for this game. The Ryzen 5 9600X's high boost clock of 5.40 GHz helps maintain high frame rates when the GPU is not the bottleneck, but the six-core configuration may limit performance in scenes with heavy AI or physics calculations. The 3DMark benchmark scores show a scaling pattern from 2456 (2 threads) to 7590 (max threads), indicating that the CPU does benefit from additional threads, but the gains flatten out after 8 threads (6726).

Comparing to its nearest rivals, the Ryzen 5 9600X's average benchmark score of 29713 places it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs. It is 0.2% above the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE (29656), but 0.5% below the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H (29868) and 0.6% below the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT (29879). This tight grouping suggests that the 9600X is competitive with these chips, though the benchmark data does not directly measure game-specific CPU load. The 32 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (89.6 GB/s bandwidth) provide adequate memory bandwidth for the game's streaming assets.

The fact that the FPS does not scale linearly with resolution at 1080p suggests that the CPU is contributing to the frame rate ceiling. At 1080p Low, the 175 FPS result is 18% higher than the 1440p Low result of 148 FPS, but the 1440p to 4K increase is only 22% (148 to 116 FPS). If the CPU were the sole limiter, the 1080p to 1440p drop would be minimal. The data indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti is still the primary bottleneck at 1080p, but the CPU's influence grows as the GPU load decreases.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for a stable 60 FPS experience?

A: The data shows that 3840x2160 at Medium settings achieves an average of 73 FPS with a minimum of 62 FPS, making it the only 4K preset to stay above 60 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium delivers 92 FPS (minimum 79 FPS), and at 1920x1080, Medium hits 110 FPS (minimum 93 FPS). All three Medium presets provide a comfortable margin above 60 FPS.

*Q: Is the RTX 4070 Ti able to handle 4K gaming in The Medium?*

A: Yes, but only at Medium settings or lower. The 4K Medium result of 73 FPS is playable, while 4K High (52 FPS) and 4K Ultra (41 FPS) fall below the 60 FPS threshold. The 4K Low preset achieves 116 FPS, but this sacrifices significant visual quality.

Q: How does the Ryzen 5 9600X perform in this game compared to its rivals?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X has an average benchmark score of 29713, which is 0.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE (29656). It is 0.5% lower than the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H (29868) and 0.6% lower than the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT (29879). These differences are marginal, suggesting similar CPU-level performance.

Q: What causes the large FPS difference between Low and Ultra settings?

A: The RTX 4070 Ti's rendering load increases significantly with higher presets. At 1080p, the difference between Low (175 FPS) and Ultra (62 FPS) is 113 FPS, a 65% reduction. This is due to the GPU's shading units, TMUs, and ROPs being more heavily utilized at higher quality settings, as well as increased memory pressure.

Q: Does the game benefit more from the CPU's single-thread or multi-thread performance?

A: The CPU's single-thread performance is strong (2183.5 Cinebench R23 single-core), which helps maintain high frame rates at 1080p Low. However, the multi-thread score of 17528.5 suggests that the game can utilize multiple cores. The scaling from 175 FPS at 1080p Low to 148 FPS at 1440p Low indicates that the GPU becomes the limiting factor as resolution increases, reducing the CPU's influence.

Q: Is the 12 GB VRAM of the RTX 4070 Ti sufficient for this game at 4K?

A: The 4K results suggest that VRAM capacity is not a limiting factor, as the GPU achieves playable frame rates at Medium (73 FPS). The 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth and 192-bit bus width provide adequate data throughput, though the GPU's compute power (40.09 TFLOPS FP32) is the primary constraint at higher presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC. It features 7680 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, with 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores. The GPU's boost clock is 2610 MHz, and it has 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's FP32 performance is 40.09 TFLOPS, and it achieves a pixel rate of 208.8 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 626.4 GTexel/s.

The benchmark data for the RTX 4070 Ti shows it performs in the 84th percentile of all GPUs, with an average score of 44795. It is 1.6% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A6000 (44075), but 0.8% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile (45152) and 1.3% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT (45384). The PassMark G3D score of 31624 indicates strong DirectX performance, while the DirectX 12 score of 116 is notably lower, suggesting that the GPU's performance varies significantly by API and workload.

In The Medium, the GPU's role is dominant across most settings and resolutions. The measured FPS data shows that the RTX 4070 Ti is the primary bottleneck at all resolutions when using High or Ultra presets. At 4K Ultra, the 41 FPS result represents a 66% drop from 4K Low (116 FPS), demonstrating the massive computational cost of the Ultra preset. The GPU's 12 GB VRAM is sufficient, as the game does not appear to hit memory capacity limits at any tested setting.

The GPU's ray tracing capabilities (60 RT cores) are relevant for a horror game like The Medium, which likely uses advanced lighting effects. However, the measured data does not distinguish between rasterized and ray-traced workloads. The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support ensures compatibility with modern rendering techniques, but the PassMark DirectX 12 score of 116 suggests that the GPU may not excel in all DX12 scenarios.

The scaling from 1080p to 4K at High settings (79 to 52 FPS, a 34% drop) is consistent with the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute limits. The RTX 4070 Ti's 504.2 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for 4K textures, but the 40.09 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is the limiting factor when processing the increased pixel count. The GPU's 80 ROPs handle the final pixel output, and the 208.8 GPixel/s pixel rate theoretically supports 4K at high frame rates, but the shading and texture work (626.4 GTexel/s) becomes the constraint.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The following data points were measured for the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti combination in The Medium. All values are average FPS unless otherwise noted.

1920x1080:

• Low: 175 FPS
• Medium: 110 FPS (minimum 93 FPS, maximum 126 FPS)
• High: 79 FPS
• Ultra: 62 FPS

2560x1440:

• Low: 148 FPS
• Medium: 92 FPS (minimum 79 FPS, maximum 106 FPS)
• High: 66 FPS
• Ultra: 52 FPS

3840x2160:

• Low: 116 FPS
• Medium: 73 FPS (minimum 62 FPS, maximum 83 FPS)
• High: 52 FPS
• Ultra: 41 FPS

The Medium preset was the only one with reported minimum and maximum FPS values, indicating that the benchmark captured a full frame time distribution for this setting. At 1080p Medium, the 93 FPS minimum ensures no significant dips below 60 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the 79 FPS minimum is still above the 60 FPS threshold. At 4K Medium, the 62 FPS minimum is just barely above 60 FPS, suggesting that some scenes may occasionally dip below this level.

The Ultra preset results show the most dramatic resolution scaling: 62 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p, and 41 FPS at 4K. This represents a 34% drop from 1080p to 4K, which is consistent with the GPU's compute limitations at maximum quality. The Low preset results show a less severe scaling: 175 to 148 to 116 FPS from 1080p to 4K, a 34% drop overall, but with a smaller 15% drop from 1080p to 1440p, indicating the CPU's influence at lower resolutions.

The overall combo rank for this system in The Medium is 394 out of 3724 tested combinations, placing it in the top 10.6% of all tested configurations. This rank reflects the system's strong performance, particularly at Medium settings, where it maintains playable frame rates even at 4K. The data confirms that this pairing is well-suited for the game, with the primary recommendation being to use Medium settings for the best balance of visual quality and performance across all resolutions.