The Medium

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for this hardware in The Medium?

A: The data shows the strongest experience at 1920x1080 with Low settings, delivering 191 FPS average. For a balanced visual-to-performance ratio, 2560x1440 Medium produces 101 FPS average with a 86 FPS minimum and 116 FPS maximum, which keeps the frame rate well above standard display refresh targets.

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

A: The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 ranks 173rd out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the top 4.6% of all recorded configurations for this game.

Q: Does the CPU or GPU bottleneck the game at 4K?

A: The resolution scaling data indicates the GPU is the primary limiting factor at 3840x2160. Going from 1080p Low (191 FPS) to 4K Low (127 FPS) shows a 33.5% performance drop, while moving from 1440p Medium (101 FPS) to 4K Medium (79 FPS) shows a 21.8% drop, consistent with GPU-bound behavior at higher pixel counts.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at Medium settings?

A: The Medium preset at every resolution shows a stable frame window. At 1920x1080 the range is 102 to 138 FPS (average 120), at 2560x1440 it is 86 to 116 FPS (average 101), and at 3840x2160 it is 67 to 91 FPS (average 79). The spread narrows as resolution increases, indicating consistent rendering loads.

Q: Is the RTX 4080's 16 GB VRAM a factor in this game?

A: The 16 GB GDDR6X memory with a 256-bit bus and 716.8 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for all tested configurations, including the Ultra preset at 3840x2160 which still averages 45 FPS. The VRAM capacity does not appear to be a limiting factor in any measured row.

Q: How does the CPU's single-thread performance relate to the game's results?

A: The Ryzen 5 9600X scores 2183.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 1253 in 3DMark single-thread. These strong single-thread scores support the high frame rates seen at 1080p Low (191 FPS), where CPU overhead becomes more relevant than at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data across all four presets and three resolutions reveals a clear hierarchy. The Medium preset offers the best compromise between visual fidelity and frame rate stability, with the only complete min/max data recorded in the entire measurement set. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 120 FPS average with a 102 FPS minimum, keeping every frame well above the 60 FPS threshold. At 2560x1440, Medium still maintains a 101 FPS average and 86 FPS minimum, which is sufficient for high-refresh displays. Even at 3840x2160, Medium holds a 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS minimum, which remains playable on standard 60 Hz panels.

The High preset sits between Medium and Ultra but lacks the frame time data of Medium. At 1080p High produces 86 FPS, at 1440p High produces 72 FPS, and at 4K High produces 57 FPS. These numbers are all playable but show a steeper drop-off than Medium when moving up in resolution. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding 68 FPS at 1080p, 57 FPS at 1440p, and 45 FPS at 4K. The Low preset produces extremely high frame rates (191 FPS at 1080p, 161 FPS at 1440p, 127 FPS at 4K) but sacrifices the visual quality that The Medium's horror atmosphere benefits from.

For the best experience, the Medium preset at 2560x1440 is the recommended target. It provides a 101 FPS average with a narrow 86-116 FPS window, indicating consistent frame pacing. Users with 4K displays can still use Medium at 3840x2160, where the 79 FPS average and 67 FPS minimum deliver smooth gameplay. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot for this combination, balancing the GPU load across all resolutions while maintaining frame rates that exceed typical display refresh rates.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, with the magnitude varying by preset. Starting from 1920x1080, the average FPS at Medium settings drops from 120 to 101 at 2560x1440, a 15.8% reduction. Moving from 1440p to 3840x2160, the Medium average drops from 101 to 79, a 21.8% reduction. The total drop from 1080p Medium to 4K Medium is 34.2%.

The Low preset shows the largest absolute drop across the resolution range. At 1080p Low, the system produces 191 FPS. At 1440p Low, it produces 161 FPS (a 15.7% drop), and at 4K Low, it produces 127 FPS (a 21.1% drop from 1440p). The total drop from 1080p Low to 4K Low is 33.5%. The High preset follows a similar pattern: 86 FPS at 1080p, 72 FPS at 1440p (16.3% drop), and 57 FPS at 4K (20.8% drop from 1440p), totaling a 33.7% reduction from 1080p to 4K.

The Ultra preset shows the steepest relative declines. From 1080p Ultra (68 FPS) to 1440p Ultra (57 FPS) is a 16.2% drop, and from 1440p Ultra to 4K Ultra (45 FPS) is a 21.1% drop, with a total reduction of 33.8%. The consistency of these percentage drops across all four presets indicates that the scaling behavior is resolution-driven rather than settings-driven. The GPU workload scales nearly linearly with pixel count, confirming that the RTX 4080 is the limiting component at higher resolutions. The CPU's contribution becomes less significant as resolution increases, evidenced by the fact that the frame rate gaps between presets narrow at 4K compared to 1080p.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 achieves a rank of 173 out of 3724 tested combinations in The Medium. This places the configuration in the top 4.6% of all recorded systems for this specific game. The high ranking reflects the strong synergy between the CPU and GPU in this workload, which appears to favor both the single-thread performance of the Ryzen 5 and the raw rasterization power of the RTX 4080.

The CPU's percentile standing reinforces this interpretation. The Ryzen 5 9600X sits at the 81st percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 29713. Its nearest rivals show how tightly clustered the competition is: the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5755GE is 0.2% ahead at 29656, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H is 0.5% behind at 29868, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT is 0.6% behind at 29879, and the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS is 0.8% behind at 29955. This grouping shows that the 9600X is competitively positioned among modern processors, with no significant performance gap to its immediate competitors.

The GPU similarly holds a strong position. The RTX 4080 ranks at the 86th percentile against all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 54247. Its nearest rivals are the RTX 4080 SUPER (0.1% ahead at 54209), the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X (1.1% ahead at 54828), the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (2.6% ahead at 55698), and the AMD Radeon 8060S (2.7% ahead at 55757). The fact that the RTX 4080's closest rival is the RTX 4080 SUPER, which differs by only 0.1%, indicates that this GPU is performing essentially at the expected level for its class.

The combined rank of 173 out of 3724 suggests that the pairing is well-matched for The Medium. The game's resolution scaling behavior, which shows CPU influence diminishing at higher resolutions, aligns with the CPU's 81st percentile and the GPU's 86th percentile. Neither component dramatically outperforms the other, which contributes to the balanced frame rates observed across all measured configurations.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the dominant component in determining frame rates across all measured settings and resolutions in The Medium. Its architectural specifications provide the foundation for the observed performance. The GPU features 9728 shading units, 304 texture mapping units, and 112 raster output units, with 76 ray tracing cores and 304 tensor cores. The chip operates at a base clock of 2205 MHz and a boost clock of 2505 MHz, with memory running at 1400 MHz (22.4 Gbps effective).

The 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration supports the texture-heavy horror environments of The Medium without appearing to bottleneck any of the tested presets. Even at the most demanding configuration (3840x2160 Ultra at 45 FPS average), the frame rate is likely limited by the GPU's compute throughput rather than memory bandwidth, given the consistent scaling pattern across resolutions.

The GPU's compute capabilities include 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 performance and an equal 48.74 TFLOPS of FP16 (1:1 ratio). The pixel rate is 280.6 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 761.5 GTexel/s. These figures translate directly to the measured performance: at 1080p Medium, the GPU sustains 120 FPS average, and at 4K Medium, it sustains 79 FPS average. The 34.2% drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings aligns with the 4x increase in pixel count, indicating that the GPU is operating in a throughput-bound regime.

The GPU's benchmark scores corroborate the in-game results. The RTX 4080 scores 34457 in Passmark G3D and 20671 in Passmark GPU Compute, with a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6567. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 214739 and Vulkan score of 263779 further demonstrate its compute strength. The GPU's 86th percentile ranking against all GPUs and its proximity to the RTX 4080 SUPER (0.1% difference) confirm that it is performing at expected levels for its class.

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU's role becomes more pronounced as resolution increases. At 1080p Low (191 FPS), the CPU likely contributes more to the frame rate ceiling. At 4K Ultra (45 FPS), the GPU is clearly the limiting factor. The Medium preset at 4K still achieves 79 FPS, showing that the RTX 4080 has sufficient headroom to handle the game's demands with reasonable settings at the highest resolution.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for this combination in The Medium covers twelve configurations across three resolutions and four quality presets. Each resolution was tested at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings, with only the Medium preset recording minimum and maximum frame times.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers the highest average FPS at 191. The Medium preset produces 120 FPS average with a 102 FPS minimum and 138 FPS maximum, providing the only complete frame time data at this resolution. The High preset averages 86 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 68 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 64.4% reduction in average FPS, highlighting the substantial impact of quality settings at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 161 FPS. The Medium preset averages 101 FPS with an 86 FPS minimum and 116 FPS maximum. The High preset averages 72 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 57 FPS. The drop from Low to Ultra at this resolution is 64.6%, nearly identical to the 1080p reduction, indicating that settings scaling is consistent across resolutions.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset averages 127 FPS. The Medium preset averages 79 FPS with a 67 FPS minimum and 91 FPS maximum. The High preset averages 57 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 45 FPS. The Low-to-Ultra reduction at 4K is 64.6% as well, demonstrating that the performance penalty for higher settings is proportionally uniform regardless of resolution.

The Medium preset's frame time data reveals interesting patterns. At 1080p, the range is 102-138 FPS, a 36 FPS spread. At 1440p, the range narrows to 86-116 FPS, a 30 FPS spread. At 4K, the range is 67-91 FPS, a 24 FPS spread. The narrowing spread at higher resolutions suggests that the GPU becomes more consistently utilized, reducing frame time variance as the workload becomes more uniform.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X serves as the processing foundation for this combination, and its characteristics influence the game's performance particularly at lower resolutions. The CPU features 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. It operates with a base clock of 3.90 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, with a 65 W TDP.

The cache hierarchy consists of 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU supports DDR5 memory on a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and it provides PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes. The integrated Radeon Graphics are present but not relevant for this discrete GPU configuration.

The CPU's single-thread performance is particularly strong. It scores 2183.5 in Cinebench R23 single-core, 342 in Cinebench R15 single-core, 2923 in Geekbench single-core, and 1253 in 3DMark single-thread. These scores support the high frame rates observed at 1080p Low (191 FPS), where CPU overhead can become a bottleneck in less demanding scenes. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 2456 and 4-thread score of 4649 show that the CPU scales well with additional threads.

Multi-threaded performance is also solid. The CPU scores 17528.5 in Cinebench R23 multicore, 2691 in Cinebench R15 multicore, 14438 in Geekbench multicore, and 7590 in 3DMark max threads. The Passmark multithread score of 30027 and physics score of 2012 indicate adequate threading capabilities for game workloads. The CPU's 81st percentile ranking and average benchmark score of 29713 place it in the upper tier of processors.

The CPU's role in The Medium is most evident at 1080p. The difference between Low (191 FPS) and Ultra (68 FPS) at 1080p is 123 FPS, while at 4K the same comparison yields an 82 FPS difference. This narrowing gap suggests that at 1080p, the CPU can feed the GPU enough frames to expose the settings-based performance differences, whereas at 4K, the GPU's rendering load dominates and reduces the CPU's influence. The Ryzen 5 9600X's high boost clock of 5.40 GHz and strong single-thread scores ensure that it does not become the limiting component in this pairing, even at the highest frame rates recorded.