The Medium

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows for The Medium reveal a clear hierarchy among the four available presets, and the data points to Medium as the most sensible default for this combination. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 59.2 FPS, which sits just under the 60 FPS threshold typically considered smooth for a horror title where atmospheric pacing matters more than twitch reflex. The jump from Low to Medium costs only 37.2 FPS (from 96.4 down to 59.2), but the visual fidelity gain in a game built around fixed camera angles and dense shadow work is substantial. The data suggests that Medium at 1080p is the sweet spot, as High drops to 46.1 FPS and Ultra falls to 32.7 FPS—both of which introduce noticeable stutter in a genre where frame pacing is critical for tension.

At 2560x1440, the picture changes. Medium produces 48.1 FPS, which is playable but not ideal for a game that uses frequent camera cuts between two simultaneous worlds. Low at this resolution yields 80.6 FPS, offering a smoother experience at the cost of reduced texture detail and shadow quality. For users prioritizing frame rate over visual polish, Low at 1440p is the pragmatic choice. The 3840x2160 results are less forgiving: Medium manages only 36.7 FPS, while Low reaches 65.7 FPS. Given that The Medium’s horror atmosphere relies heavily on lighting and volumetric effects—both heavily degraded at Low—the trade-off at 4K is steep. The data indicates that Medium at 1080p or Low at 1440p provides the best balance, but for those with 4K displays, Low is the only preset that approaches a consistently smooth experience.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT ranks 1064 out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium. That places it in the lower third of the database, which is surprising given the hardware’s specifications. The CPU ranks in the 84th percentile against all processors, and the GPU sits in the 63rd percentile against all graphics cards, yet their combined performance in this title is middling. The data implies that The Medium is particularly demanding on the GPU’s ray tracing and compute capabilities, where the RX 7600 XT’s 2048 shading units and 32 ray accelerators may be insufficient for higher presets.

The combo rank of 1064 out of 1689 means roughly 63% of tested configurations outperform it in this specific game. This is a notable outlier compared to the hardware’s general benchmark standings. The CPU’s nearest rivals—the Intel Core i9-9900K and Intel Core i7-12700H—score within 0.7% and 0.8% of the Ryzen 7 5700 respectively, yet their gaming results in other titles often differ. For The Medium, the bottleneck appears to be the GPU’s memory bandwidth (288.0 GB/s) and 128-bit bus width, which struggle with the game’s high-resolution textures and dual-world rendering. The data suggests that users seeking better performance in this title should look at GPUs with wider memory interfaces, even if their raw compute scores are similar.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT is built on the RDNA 3.0 architecture with a Navi 33 chip, fabricated on a 6 nm process at TSMC. It features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 288.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The boost clock of 2755 MHz and game clock of 2470 MHz are high for the segment, but the memory subsystem is the limiting factor in The Medium. The game’s measured FPS drops precipitously as resolution increases, which aligns with memory bandwidth constraints. At 1080p Low, the card produces 96.4 FPS, but at 4K Low it falls to 65.7 FPS—a 31.8% reduction that is modest compared to the 4x pixel count increase, suggesting the GPU’s compute units scale reasonably but the memory bus saturates.

The 16 GB VRAM capacity is generous and not the issue here; the 288.0 GB/s bandwidth is the bottleneck. The game’s dual-world mechanic requires loading two scenes simultaneously, which stresses memory throughput. The pixel rate of 176.3 GPixel/s and texture rate of 352.6 GTexel/s are respectable, but the FP32 performance of 22.57 TFLOPS is not enough to maintain high preset frame rates at 1440p and above. The data shows that at 1080p Ultra, the card falls to 32.7 FPS, indicating that the shading units are overwhelmed by the game’s post-processing effects. The GPU’s 63rd percentile standing against all GPUs is consistent with these results—it is a mid-range card that excels at lower resolutions but struggles with the demands of The Medium’s higher presets.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RX 7600 XT delivers 96.4 FPS on Low, 59.2 FPS on Medium, 46.1 FPS on High, and 32.7 FPS on Ultra. The progression shows a steep drop from Low to Medium (37.2 FPS loss), a moderate drop from Medium to High (13.1 FPS loss), and another steep drop from High to Ultra (13.4 FPS loss). The Ultra preset appears to enable additional effects that disproportionately impact performance, likely related to ray-traced reflections or volumetric shadows. The 1080p results suggest that the GPU is capable of high refresh rates only at Low settings, which is a significant caveat for a game that relies on visual storytelling.

Moving to 2560x1440, the numbers are 80.6 FPS on Low, 48.1 FPS on Medium, 38.6 FPS on High, and 30.7 FPS on Ultra. The Low preset remains playable, but Medium dips below the 50 FPS mark, which can feel sluggish in a game with frequent camera transitions. The 1440p results show a 16.4% drop from Low to Medium, a 19.7% drop from Medium to High, and a 20.5% drop from High to Ultra. The consistent percentage drops indicate that the GPU is scaling linearly with the increased shader complexity, rather than hitting a hard memory wall. At 3840x2160, the results are 65.7 FPS on Low, 36.7 FPS on Medium, 25.4 FPS on High, and 24.4 FPS on Ultra. The difference between High and Ultra at 4K is negligible (1.0 FPS), suggesting that the GPU is completely saturated at that resolution, and the Ultra preset’s additional effects have no headroom to render.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is revealing. At Low settings, the game runs at 96.4 FPS at 1080p, 80.6 FPS at 1440p, and 65.7 FPS at 4K. This is a 31.8% reduction from 1080p to 4K, which is far smaller than the 300% increase in pixel count. This indicates that at Low settings, the CPU becomes a co-limiter, as the Ryzen 7 5700’s single-thread performance (3dmark single-thread score of 901) cannot feed the GPU fast enough at lower resolutions. At Medium settings, the FPS drops from 59.2 at 1080p to 48.1 at 1440p to 36.7 at 4K—a 38.0% reduction from 1080p to 4K. This steeper drop suggests that as shader complexity increases, the GPU becomes the primary bottleneck, and the memory bandwidth limitation becomes more pronounced.

The High preset shows an even more dramatic scaling: 46.1 at 1080p, 38.6 at 1440p, and 25.4 at 4K, a 44.9% reduction. The Ultra preset starts at 32.7 FPS at 1080p and falls to 24.4 FPS at 4K, a 25.4% drop that is oddly smaller than High’s scaling. This anomaly suggests that at Ultra, the game is already hitting a hard performance ceiling at 1080p, likely due to a combination of GPU compute limits and memory bandwidth saturation. The data implies that the RX 7600 XT is best suited for 1080p Medium or 1440p Low in this title, and that pushing to 4K requires significant graphical compromises that may not be worthwhile given the modest FPS gains at Low.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a smooth experience at 1080p?

A: The Medium preset at 1920x1080 delivers 59.2 FPS, which is the closest to the 60 FPS target. High drops to 46.1 FPS and Ultra falls to 32.7 FPS, making Medium the only preset that balances visual fidelity and playability.

Q: Does the 16 GB VRAM help in this game?

A: The 16 GB GDDR6 memory is sufficient for The Medium’s texture requirements, but the 288.0 GB/s bandwidth on a 128-bit bus is the limiting factor. The FPS drops at higher resolutions are more consistent with bandwidth saturation than VRAM capacity exhaustion.

Q: How does this GPU compare to its nearest rival in general performance?

A: The RX 7600 XT has an average benchmark score of 20146, which is 1.9% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (19774) and 0.3% higher than the AMD Radeon RX 460 (20088). It trails the RX 7600 by 0.6% and the RTX 3070 Mobile by 1.9%.

Q: Why is the 4K Ultra FPS so close to 4K High?

A: At 3840x2160, High produces 25.4 FPS and Ultra produces 24.4 FPS—a difference of only 1.0 FPS. This indicates the GPU is completely saturated at that resolution, and the Ultra preset’s additional effects have no computational headroom to make a measurable impact.

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

A: The data suggests the CPU becomes a co-limiter at 1080p Low, as the FPS of 96.4 is not scaling proportionally with the GPU’s capabilities. The Ryzen 7 5700’s single-thread score of 901 in 3dmark indicates it may struggle to feed the GPU at lower resolutions and settings.

Q: What is the combo’s standing among all tested configurations?

A: This combination ranks 1064 out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the lower third. This is lower than expected given the CPU’s 84th percentile and GPU’s 63rd percentile standings, indicating the game is particularly demanding on this hardware.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 is a Zen 3 architecture chip with 8 cores and 16 threads, clocked at 3.70 GHz base and 4.60 GHz boost. Its 3dmark scores show a single-thread result of 901, a 16-thread result of 6628, and a max-thread result of 6617. The multi-threaded performance is strong, with a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20655, but the single-thread score is comparatively modest. In The Medium, the CPU’s role is primarily to manage the game’s dual-world rendering logic, which requires frequent draw calls and physics updates. The data shows that at 1080p Low, the FPS of 96.4 is likely CPU-limited, as the GPU’s compute capabilities are underutilized at that settings level.

The CPU’s nearest rival, the Intel Core i9-9900K, scores 27043 in average benchmarks, just 0.7% higher than the Ryzen 7 5700’s 27220. This near-parity suggests that in most games, the two CPUs perform identically. However, The Medium’s reliance on single-thread performance for camera transitions may favor the Intel chip, which typically has higher per-core clocks. The Ryzen 7 5700’s 16 MB of L3 cache is shared across all cores, which helps with the game’s asset streaming, but the 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth is modest. The data implies that while the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at higher settings, it does cap the maximum achievable frame rate at lower resolutions. For users targeting 1440p or 4K, the CPU’s limitations become less relevant, as the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading units dominate the performance profile. The 65 W TDP and 7 nm process node indicate efficient operation, but the architecture’s single-thread ceiling is the key constraint in this title.