The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination delivers a striking performance profile in The Medium, a horror title that proves highly sensitive to both processor speed and graphics memory bandwidth. The data shows a combo that ranks in the top tier of tested systems, yet the measured frame rates reveal a game where settings choices dramatically alter the bottleneck between the CPU and GPU.

CPU Role — cores, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is a 6-core, 12-thread processor built on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge) using 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. This is a desktop part for the AMD Socket AM5 platform, supporting DDR5 memory over a dual-channel bus with 89.6 GB/s of bandwidth. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a shared 32 MB L3 pool.

In The Medium, this processor’s performance is best understood through its synthetic benchmark scores. The single-thread results are particularly strong: a 3DMark single-thread score of 1253, Cinebench R23 single-core of 3603, and Geekbench single-core of 3363. The multi-threaded scores are also substantial, with Cinebench R23 multi-core at 25525 and Geekbench multi-core at 15182. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7585 and max-thread score of 7590 indicate that the processor scales well when all 12 threads are utilized, which is relevant for a game that can spawn multiple rendering tasks.

The processor’s percentile ranking of 85 versus all CPUs places it in the upper tier. Its nearest rivals in average benchmark score include the Intel Core i5-13490F (deltaPct 0.3), AMD Ryzen 5 230 (deltaPct 0.3), AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (deltaPct -0.4), and Intel Core i5-14500T (deltaPct -0.5). These deltas are within a fraction of a percent, meaning the 9600X is effectively tied with these parts in overall compute capability. For The Medium, this suggests that the CPU is not a limiting factor at most settings, but the game’s frame rate scaling across resolutions will clarify where the processor’s headroom ends.

How This Combo Ranks — use comboRankInGame vs other tested combos

The combination of the Ryzen 5 9600X and RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 18 out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium. This places the system in the top 1.1% of all recorded configurations, a position that reflects the raw power of both components. The rank indicates that this pairing outperforms the vast majority of systems, but it does not top the chart, leaving room for combinations with even faster processors or more optimized configurations.

The gap between this combo and the very best systems is likely driven by the CPU, as the RTX 4090 is already near the apex of GPU performance. The 9600X’s 6-core design, while excellent for gaming, may trail higher-core-count parts in specific multi-threaded scenes. However, the delta between this combo and the #1 spot is not detailed in the data; the rank of 18 simply confirms that this is a high-end pairing. The benchmark results indicate that the system delivers playable frame rates even at the most demanding settings, which is consistent with its elite ranking.

Resolution Scaling — how FPS drops from 1080p to 4K and what it says about the limiting component

The measured FPS data for The Medium shows a clear trend as resolution increases. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo achieves 189.3 FPS, but this drops to 179.4 FPS at 1440p and further to 141.6 FPS at 4K. This is a 25.2% reduction from 1080p to 4K at Low settings, which suggests that the CPU is still providing enough headroom at lower resolutions, but the GPU is beginning to take on more load as pixel count rises.

The pattern shifts dramatically at Ultra settings. At 1080p Ultra, the system manages 75.3 FPS. At 1440p Ultra, it drops to 61.4 FPS, and at 4K Ultra, it falls to 49.4 FPS. The reduction from 1080p to 4K at Ultra is 34.4%, a larger percentage drop than at Low settings. This indicates that at Ultra settings, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck, as the increased graphical complexity consumes the RTX 4090’s resources. The 1080p Ultra score of 75.3 FPS versus the 1080p Low score of 189.3 FPS shows a 60.2% performance hit purely from raising settings, reinforcing that the GPU is the limiting component when the visual load is high.

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K at Medium and High settings further supports this. At Medium, the drop is from 130.2 FPS to 110.0 FPS to 84.9 FPS, a 34.8% reduction across the three resolutions. At High, the drop is from 96.1 FPS to 82.4 FPS to 65.2 FPS, a 32.2% reduction. These consistent declines indicate that the RTX 4090 is the dominant force in determining frame rates, with the CPU providing sufficient throughput to avoid major stalling.

Measured FPS Breakdown — resolution by resolution, settings by settings, exact numbers

The benchmark data provides average FPS for each resolution and settings combination, with no minimum or maximum values recorded. At 1920x1080, the system delivers 189.3 FPS on Low, 130.2 FPS on Medium, 96.1 FPS on High, and 75.3 FPS on Ultra. These numbers show a smooth progression, with each settings tier reducing performance by roughly 20-25% compared to the previous tier.

Moving to 2560x1440, the results are 179.4 FPS on Low, 110.0 FPS on Medium, 82.4 FPS on High, and 61.4 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 65.8%, which is slightly larger than the 60.2% gap at 1080p. This suggests that the GPU’s workload scales non-linearly with both resolution and settings, and the RTX 4090’s 24 GB of GDDR6X memory is being taxed more heavily at higher resolutions.

At 3840x2160, the system achieves 141.6 FPS on Low, 84.9 FPS on Medium, 65.2 FPS on High, and 49.4 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest in the entire dataset, but it remains above 48 FPS, which is generally considered playable for a horror title. The jump from 4K Low to 4K Ultra represents a 65.1% reduction in frame rate, highlighting the extreme sensitivity of The Medium to graphical settings at high resolutions. The data shows that players seeking 60+ FPS at 4K will need to use Medium settings, while High and Ultra are more suited to 1440p or 1080p displays.

GPU Role — VRAM, clocks, and how they relate to this game's results

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD102 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It features 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 raster output units, along with 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores. The GPU operates at a base clock of 2235 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). The memory subsystem consists of 24 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s.

This memory configuration is critical for The Medium, a game that uses fixed camera angles and high-resolution textures. The 24 GB VRAM ensures that no texture streaming bottlenecks occur, even at 4K Ultra, where the frame rate of 49.4 FPS is likely limited by compute rather than memory capacity. The GPU’s FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s provide ample raw power for the game’s rendering demands. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s is particularly relevant, as The Medium’s fixed-camera presentation still requires full-screen passes at high resolutions.

The RTX 4090’s average benchmark score of 66473 places it in the 91st percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA Tesla T4 (deltaPct -0.4), Tesla P40 (deltaPct 0.5), AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 (deltaPct -0.9), and Quadro P6000 (deltaPct -1.3). These deltas are all within 1.3%, indicating that the RTX 4090 is statistically tied with these professional-grade cards in synthetic benchmarks, though its gaming performance in The Medium is clearly superior due to its architecture and driver optimizations. The GPU’s end-of-life production status and launch MSRP of 1,599 USD are noted, but the data shows that it remains a formidable choice for this title, delivering 4K Ultra performance that is nearly double the 30 FPS threshold for cinematic play.