The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding fixed-camera horror experience where the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 combination shows a clear performance hierarchy. Benchmark data indicates that the RTX 5070 is the primary driver of frame rates, with the CPU providing sufficient headroom across all tested configurations. The measured results reveal a consistent pattern: performance scales predictably with resolution and settings, but the magnitude of those changes offers insight into the game's engine limitations and the balance of this particular hardware pairing.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a substantial frame rate drop that confirms the GPU-bound nature of The Medium at higher resolutions. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 72.4 FPS at 1080p to 61.7 FPS at 1440p, then further to 49.1 FPS at 4K. This represents a 32% reduction from 1080p to 4K, a scaling pattern typical of a title where pixel throughput becomes the limiting factor. The RTX 5070's 672.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 192-bit bus width are exercised heavily as resolution increases, and the data suggests the card's 12 GB GDDR7 frame buffer is adequate for the game's demands at these settings.

Low settings reveal a different scaling curve. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 163.3 FPS, which drops to 133.6 FPS at 1440p and 106.6 FPS at 4K. The percentage drop from 1080p to 4K at Low settings is approximately 35%, slightly steeper than at High settings. This indicates that even when reducing graphical fidelity, the rendering resolution remains a dominant cost. The fact that 4K Low still delivers over 100 FPS demonstrates that the RTX 5070 has substantial raw throughput, but the game's fixed-camera presentation and layered scene rendering—a hallmark of the title—still impose a significant pixel cost.

Ultra settings produce the most dramatic scaling. The frame rate at 1080p Ultra is 54.4 FPS, dropping to 51.1 FPS at 1440p and 39.3 FPS at 4K. The 1440p to 4K transition at Ultra is particularly punishing, with a 23% loss. This steep drop suggests that Ultra presets introduce effects that scale super-linearly with resolution, likely including volumetric effects and high-resolution shadow maps that tax the 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 compute capability of the GPU. The data shows that 4K Ultra is not a viable target for this combination, while 1440p Ultra sits just above the playable threshold.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 serves as the clear performance bottleneck in this configuration, and its specifications align with the observed results. The GPU operates with a boost clock of 2512 MHz and a base clock of 2325 MHz on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture. The 48 RT cores are relevant for The Medium, which uses ray-traced reflections and lighting in select scenes, though the measured frame rates suggest the game's hybrid rendering approach does not fully saturate these units. The 192 tensor cores are present on the die but are not leveraged for DLSS in this data set, as all measured results are native rendering.

The 12 GB memory capacity, paired with a 192-bit bus and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth, proves sufficient for the game's asset streaming at all tested resolutions. The Medium's dual-reality mechanic, which renders two worlds simultaneously in certain sequences, places unusual memory pressure on the GPU. The data indicates that 12 GB avoids capacity-related stutters, as the frame rates remain consistent within each settings tier. The GDDR7 memory running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) provides the bandwidth needed for the 4K High result of 49.1 FPS, which is a borderline playable figure but shows the card working near its memory throughput limits.

The GPU's PassMark G3D score of 29137 places it in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (deltaPct 0.2) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (deltaPct 0.6). This competitive positioning is reflected in the game's frame rates, where the RTX 5070 delivers solid 1440p performance but struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 4K High. The 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is evidently well-utilized by the game's forward rendering path, as the scaling from Medium to Ultra settings shows predictable compute-bound behavior.

FAQ

Q: Can this system maintain 60 FPS at 1440p with High settings in The Medium?

A: Yes, the measured average frame rate at 2560x1440 with High settings is 61.7 FPS. This is marginally above the 60 FPS threshold, indicating that the RTX 5070 and Ryzen 5 9600X combination is sufficient, though there is limited headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: What is the best resolution for Ultra settings on this hardware?

A: The data shows that 1080p Ultra achieves 54.4 FPS, while 1440p Ultra drops to 51.1 FPS and 4K Ultra falls to 39.3 FPS. For a smoother experience, 1080p Ultra is the highest quality preset that remains close to playable, though none of the Ultra results reach 60 FPS.

Q: How much performance is gained by lowering settings from Ultra to Low at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the average frame rate increases from 39.3 FPS at Ultra to 106.6 FPS at Low. This represents a 171% improvement, demonstrating that The Medium's Ultra settings impose a massive rendering cost that can be partially mitigated by reducing graphical fidelity.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor at 1080p Low?

A: The 163.3 FPS result at 1920x1080 Low suggests the GPU remains the limiting component, as the Ryzen 5 9600X has ample headroom. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 25525 and single-core score of 3603 indicate strong performance that does not bottleneck the RTX 5070 at these frame rates.

Q: Does the RTX 5070's 12 GB VRAM cause any issues in The Medium?

A: The measured frame rates show no evidence of VRAM-related stuttering or performance collapse. The 12 GB GDDR7 capacity appears sufficient for all tested settings, including 4K Ultra, which maintains a playable 39.3 FPS average without min FPS data indicating drops.

Q: How does this system compare to the RTX 3090 in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The RTX 5070 has an average benchmark score of 41687, which is 0.6% higher than the RTX 3090's 41441. This indicates near-parity in synthetic workloads, though in-game results for The Medium may differ due to architectural differences in Blackwell 2.0 versus the older Ampere design.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest performance across all settings. Low settings produce 163.3 FPS average, while Medium settings drop to 103.2 FPS. High settings yield 72.4 FPS, and Ultra settings reduce the frame rate to 54.4 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p shows a 67% reduction in frame rate, indicating that Ultra presets are exceptionally demanding even at the lowest tested resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern continues with lower absolute values. Low settings achieve 133.6 FPS, Medium settings reach 83.1 FPS, High settings deliver 61.7 FPS, and Ultra settings produce 51.1 FPS. The 1440p results show that High settings are barely playable above 60 FPS, while Ultra remains below the threshold. The drop from 1080p to 1440p at High settings is 14.8%, which is less severe than the 32% drop from 1080p to 4K.

At 3840x2160, the GPU is pushed to its limits. Low settings maintain 106.6 FPS, which is still smooth, but Medium settings fall to 69.1 FPS. High settings drop to 49.1 FPS, and Ultra settings bottom out at 39.3 FPS. The 4K results show a clear ceiling for this hardware combination: only Low and Medium settings provide consistently playable frame rates above 60 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 4K is 29%, while the gap between High and Ultra is 20%, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest preset.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, with its 6 cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, provides more than enough processing power for The Medium. The CPU's boost clock of 5.40 GHz and base clock of 3.90 GHz deliver strong single-thread performance, which is critical for the game's fixed-camera scenes that often rely on a primary thread for scene management. The Cinebench R23 single-core score of 3603 places the CPU in a strong position, and the multi-core score of 25525 ensures that background tasks do not interfere with game performance.

The 32 MB shared L3 cache helps maintain smooth frame pacing in the game's dual-reality sequences, where the engine must load and manage assets for two simultaneous worlds. The Ryzen 5 9600X's 89.6 GB/s memory bandwidth, while not directly comparable to the GPU's dedicated bandwidth, ensures that system memory transfers do not become a bottleneck when streaming high-resolution textures. The CPU's PassMark multi-thread score of 30027 and single-thread score of 4570 indicate a balanced processor that excels in both lightly and heavily threaded workloads.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's role is clearly secondary to the GPU. The 163.3 FPS result at 1080p Low shows that the processor can feed the RTX 5070 adequately. The CPU's nearest rival, the Intel Core i5-13490F, has an average benchmark score of 28173, which is 0.3% lower than the Ryzen 5 9600X's 28246. This near-parity in synthetic benchmarks translates to negligible differences in game performance. The Ryzen 5 9600X's 3DMark scores reinforce its capability: 7590 at max threads and 1253 single-thread, both of which are well above the requirements for maintaining frame rates in a game like The Medium, where the GPU is the definitive performance limiter across all tested resolutions and settings.