The Medium

# How This Combo Ranks

The pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 with the AMD Radeon RX 570 lands at rank 1598 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. That places this system in the bottom 5.4% of all configurations tested, a position that reflects a severe mismatch between the hardware and the game's demands. The data shows a combo that struggles to deliver playable frame rates across most settings, with only the lowest presets at 1080p approaching anything resembling smooth gameplay. The rank itself tells a story of a system that is fundamentally underpowered for this title, regardless of the CPU's relatively strong standing in general benchmarks.

The CPU sits at the 84th percentile among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 27220. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core i9-9900K at 27043 (only 0.7% behind) and the Intel Core i7-12700H at 27006 (0.8% behind). This suggests the processor is not the bottleneck in the traditional sense — it has ample compute headroom. The GPU, however, tells a different story. The RX 570 ranks at the 74th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 30158. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 at 30109 (0.2% behind) and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT at 30097 (0.2% behind). These deltas are remarkably small, indicating the GPU's benchmark performance is competitive with much newer cards in synthetic tests, yet the real-world gaming results in The Medium paint a far less flattering picture.

# GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the Polaris 20 chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It packs 5,700 million transistors across a 232 mm² die, with 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units. The GPU operates at a base clock of 1168 MHz and boosts to 1244 MHz, with memory running at 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective). The 4 GB of GDDR5 memory sits on a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth — a figure that seems reasonable on paper for a card of this era.

In The Medium, the GPU's role becomes painfully clear through the measured FPS data. At 1080p Ultra, the combo manages only 16 FPS, dropping to 9.7 FPS at 4K Ultra. These numbers indicate that the GPU is being overwhelmed by the game's visual complexity, particularly at higher settings. The texture rate of 159.2 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 39.81 GPixel/s are insufficient for the game's demands at high resolutions. The FP32 performance of 5.095 TFLOPS, while respectable for a 2017 card, clearly falls short when the game's rendering pipeline requires more computational throughput. The 4 GB VRAM capacity likely contributes to the performance collapse at higher settings, as texture streaming and memory allocation exceed available capacity, causing severe frame rate penalties.

# Resolution Scaling

The data reveals a dramatic scaling pattern as resolution increases. At Low settings, the combo delivers 45.9 FPS at 1080p, drops to 35.8 FPS at 1440p (a 22% reduction), and falls to 30.2 FPS at 4K (a 34% reduction from 1080p). This scaling is relatively gentle, suggesting that at Low settings, the system is partially CPU-bound or memory-bandwidth-bound rather than purely GPU-limited. The 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth becomes a critical factor here, as higher resolutions demand more data throughput.

At High settings, the scaling becomes more punishing: 17.8 FPS at 1080p, 20.1 FPS at 1440p, and 14.8 FPS at 4K. The 1440p result being higher than 1080p is anomalous and suggests measurement variance, but the overall trend shows a system that cannot maintain playable frame rates regardless of resolution. The Ultra preset shows the most severe degradation: 16 FPS at 1080p, 15.8 FPS at 1440p, and 9.7 FPS at 4K. These numbers indicate that the GPU is the limiting component at higher settings, as the CPU's strong benchmark scores cannot compensate for the GPU's inability to process the game's rendering workload. The resolution scaling pattern points to a system where the GPU is saturated at all resolutions above 1080p Low, with minimal headroom for visual quality improvements.

# Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the lowest resolution tested, the combo shows its best performance. Low settings produce 45.9 FPS, which is borderline playable for a horror title where atmosphere matters more than twitch reflexes. Medium settings drop to 26.2 FPS, High to 17.8 FPS, and Ultra to 16 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is substantial — a 43% reduction — indicating that Medium settings introduce rendering features that heavily tax the GPU. The difference between High and Ultra is minimal (1.8 FPS), suggesting that Ultra adds little beyond High in terms of visual fidelity while still demanding significantly more GPU resources.

Moving to 2560x1440, the performance profile shifts downward. Low settings deliver 35.8 FPS, which is playable but not smooth. Medium drops to 23.2 FPS, High to 20.1 FPS, and Ultra to 15.8 FPS. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p at Low settings (45.9 to 35.8 FPS, a 22% reduction) is less severe than the scaling at Medium settings (26.2 to 23.2 FPS, an 11% reduction), suggesting that at Medium, the GPU is already hitting a performance wall. At 3840x2160, the results become largely academic: Low settings produce 30.2 FPS, Medium drops to 20.7 FPS, High to 14.8 FPS, and Ultra to 9.7 FPS. The 4K Low result is interesting — it maintains over 30 FPS, which is technically playable, but the visual quality at Low settings at 4K is likely poor enough to negate the resolution advantage.

# FAQ

Q: Is this combo capable of playing The Medium at 1080p?

A: At 1080p Low settings, the combo achieves 45.9 FPS, which is playable. However, moving to Medium drops performance to 26.2 FPS, and High or Ultra settings produce 17.8 FPS and 16 FPS respectively, all below smooth gameplay thresholds.

Q: How does the CPU's benchmark performance compare to its rivals?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 scores 27220 on average, sitting 0.7% above the Intel Core i9-9900K (27043) and 0.8% above the Intel Core i7-12700H (27006). The AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 trails by 1.2% with a score of 26909.

Q: What is the GPU's benchmark standing relative to modern cards?

A: The RX 570 scores 30158 on average, which is 0.2% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (30109) and 0.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT (30097). Despite these similar synthetic scores, real-world performance in The Medium is significantly worse.

Q: Why does performance drop so severely at 4K Ultra?

A: At 4K Ultra, the combo produces 9.7 FPS, a 79% reduction from the 45.9 FPS at 1080p Low. This indicates the GPU's 4 GB VRAM and 224.0 GB/s memory bandwidth are overwhelmed by the resolution and settings demands.

Q: Is there any resolution where the combo performs well at High settings?

A: No. At High settings, the best result is 20.1 FPS at 1440p, with 17.8 FPS at 1080p and 14.8 FPS at 4K. All results are below playable thresholds.

Q: How does the combo rank overall in this game?

A: It ranks 1598 out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 5.4% of all configurations tested for The Medium.

# CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 is a Zen 3 architecture processor based on the Cezanne codename, manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process. It features 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.60 GHz. The 65 W TDP is notably low for an 8-core processor, reflecting the efficiency of the Zen 3 architecture. The cache hierarchy includes 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support includes DDR4 with dual-channel configuration, providing 51.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Benchmark results show the CPU's strengths: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 20655, while single-core reaches 2916. PassMark multithread scores 24303, with single-thread at 3296. The 3DMark 16-thread test produces 6628, while 2-thread scores 1762. These numbers indicate a processor that handles multithreaded workloads well, which is typical for games that utilize multiple cores. However, in The Medium, the CPU's role appears secondary to the GPU bottleneck. The data shows that even at 1080p Low, where the CPU would typically have the most influence, the combo only achieves 45.9 FPS — far below what the CPU's capabilities would suggest possible if the GPU could keep up. The CPU's 84th percentile ranking among all processors contrasts sharply with the combo's 1598th place ranking in this game, confirming that the GPU is the primary limiting factor. The processor's 16 MB L3 cache and dual-channel memory bandwidth provide adequate support for gaming, but they cannot overcome the GPU's rendering limitations.

# Settings Recommendations

Based solely on the measured FPS data, the only configuration that approaches playability is 1080p Low, which delivers 45.9 FPS. This is the only setting combination that exceeds 30 FPS at any resolution. The next closest is 1440p Low at 35.8 FPS, which is also technically playable but with reduced visual fidelity. For players who prioritize frame rate over visual quality, 1080p Low is the clear choice, offering the smoothest experience this combo can provide in The Medium.

At Medium settings, the best result is 26.2 FPS at 1080p, which falls below the 30 FPS threshold commonly considered the minimum for playable performance. High settings produce 20.1 FPS at 1440p (the best High result), while Ultra settings never exceed 16 FPS at any resolution. The data indicates that Medium settings at 1080p offer a marginal improvement in visual quality over Low, but the 43% performance penalty makes it a poor trade-off. High and Ultra settings are effectively unplayable, with performance dropping to single digits at 4K Ultra (9.7 FPS). The recommendation from the measured data is unambiguous: use Low settings at 1080p for the only acceptable experience, or accept severe performance compromises at any other configuration. The gap between Low and Medium performance suggests that Medium's additional rendering features — likely including higher-resolution textures and more complex lighting — place demands on the 4 GB VRAM that the card cannot meet without catastrophic frame rate drops.