The Medium

The Medium presents a severe challenge for the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and AMD Radeon RX 570 combination. The measured data indicates this pairing is positioned at the bottom of the performance hierarchy, with a combo rank of 1640 out of 1689 tested configurations. This places the system in the bottom 3% of all tested combos, indicating that the experience will be characterized by significant performance limitations across all settings and resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals a system that is almost entirely GPU-bound. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 45.7 FPS at 1920x1080 to 34.7 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 24.1%. The further drop to 27.8 FPS at 3840x2160 represents a 39.2% decrease from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern shows that even at the lowest graphical preset, the RX 570's rendering capabilities are the primary constraint, as the frame rate continues to fall steadily with each resolution increase.

The situation becomes more extreme at higher quality presets. At Medium settings, the frame rate drops from 28.4 FPS at 1080p to 24.4 FPS at 1440p, then to 16.1 FPS at 4K. The 4K result represents a 43.3% reduction compared to 1080p. At High settings, the scaling is even steeper: 20.1 FPS at 1080p falls to 14.9 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 11.2 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset shows a similar pattern, with 16.1 FPS at 1080p dropping to 15.8 FPS at 1440p, then collapsing to 10.6 FPS at 4K.

The resolution scaling data strongly suggests that the GPU is the limiting component in this configuration. The 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X, with its Zen 2 architecture and 32 MB of L3 cache, provides ample processing headroom for this title. The consistent frame rate degradation across all resolutions points to the RX 570's 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth as the bottleneck, particularly when higher resolutions demand more memory bandwidth and capacity.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured performance data, the only viable settings for this combination are at 1080p with Low quality. The 45.7 FPS average at 1920x1080 Low is the only configuration that approaches playable frame rates. Even this setting, however, falls short of the 60 FPS target that many players consider ideal for smooth gameplay. The 1080p Medium preset produces an average of 28.4 FPS, which is a 37.9% reduction from Low and would likely result in noticeable stuttering during gameplay.

At 1440p, the situation is considerably worse. The Low preset delivers 34.7 FPS, which is technically playable but far from smooth. The Medium preset at 1440p drops to 24.4 FPS, and High falls to 14.9 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p, at 15.8 FPS, is effectively unplayable. At 4K, all presets produce frame rates below 28 FPS, with the Low preset at 27.8 FPS being the only remotely usable option, and even that would be a challenging experience.

The data indicates that players should prioritize resolution over quality settings. The difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is 17.3 FPS, while the difference between Medium and High at the same resolution is only 8.3 FPS. This suggests that the graphical fidelity improvements from Medium to High come at a disproportionate performance cost. For this combination, the recommended approach is to use 1080p with Low settings for the best balance of visual quality and performance, accepting that the game will run at roughly 46 FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 1640 out of 1689 places this system in the 97th percentile of worst-performing configurations for The Medium. This is a remarkably low position, indicating that nearly every other tested combination delivers better performance. The CPU, however, is not the source of this poor ranking. The Ryzen 7 3700X's average benchmark score of 28631 places it in the 85th percentile of all CPUs, with its nearest rivals being the Intel Core i5-12600 at 28654 (a 0.1% difference) and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT at 28591 (a 0.1% difference). This shows that the processor is competitive with modern mid-range offerings.

The GPU tells a different story. The RX 570's average benchmark score of 30158 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, but its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 at 30109 and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT at 30097, both within 0.2% of its score. This suggests that while the GPU is not the absolute worst, its performance characteristics are not well-suited to The Medium's demanding rendering requirements. The combination of an older GCN 4.0 architecture with 4 GB of VRAM creates a significant disadvantage in a game that appears to be heavily dependent on memory bandwidth and capacity.

The ranking data indicates that this combo is in the bottom tier for this specific title, even though both components individually perform reasonably well in synthetic benchmarks. This discrepancy highlights the importance of game-specific testing, as the workload presented by The Medium clearly does not favor this hardware configuration.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete set of measured results shows a consistent pattern of performance degradation across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the frame rates are 45.7 FPS (Low), 28.4 FPS (Medium), 20.1 FPS (High), and 16.1 FPS (Ultra). The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 64.8% reduction in performance, demonstrating that the higher presets impose substantial additional rendering loads.

At 2560x1440, the results are 34.7 FPS (Low), 24.4 FPS (Medium), 14.9 FPS (High), and 15.8 FPS (Ultra). Interestingly, the Ultra preset at 1440p outperforms the High preset by 0.9 FPS, which suggests that the two presets may have similar GPU workload characteristics at this resolution, or that the Ultra preset's additional effects are not the primary bottleneck. This anomaly indicates that the GPU is so heavily constrained that certain settings changes have minimal impact.

At 3840x2160, the results are 27.8 FPS (Low), 16.1 FPS (Medium), 11.2 FPS (High), and 10.6 FPS (Ultra). The 4K Low result is notable because it is only 6.9 FPS lower than the 1440p Low result, suggesting that the GPU is hitting a hard performance ceiling at this resolution. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is only 0.6 FPS, further confirming that the GPU is completely saturated.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570's specifications provide context for its poor performance in The Medium. The GPU features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 render output units, running at base and boost clocks of 1168 MHz and 1244 MHz respectively. The 4 GB of GDDR5 memory operates at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) across a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU's pixel rate is 39.81 GPixel/s, and its texture rate is 159.2 GTexel/s.

The GCN 4.0 architecture, manufactured on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries, delivers 5.095 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. While this raw compute figure is not trivial, the game's performance data suggests that memory bandwidth and capacity are the critical limiting factors. The 4 GB VRAM capacity is particularly problematic for a game like The Medium, which likely requires substantial texture data at higher resolutions and quality settings.

The GPU's clock behavior also plays a role. The boost clock of 1244 MHz is modest by modern standards, and the GPU's thermal and power constraints, with a 150 W TDP, may cause the card to operate below its maximum boost under sustained loads. The Vulkan API support (version 1.3) and DirectX 12 (12_0) capability are present, but the older architecture may not efficiently execute the game's specific shader workloads.

The data shows that the GPU is the definitive bottleneck in this configuration. Even at 1080p Low, the frame rate of 45.7 FPS suggests that the GPU is operating near its practical limit for this game. The CPU's substantial processing power, evidenced by its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 19087 and PassMark multi-thread score of 22458, remains largely underutilized. The 74th percentile GPU ranking versus the 85th percentile CPU ranking further confirms this imbalance, making the RX 570 the component that determines the overall experience in The Medium.