The Medium

The Medium presents an interesting stress profile for the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination. The measured data reveals a system that is heavily influenced by graphical settings, with the GPU acting as the primary performance arbiter at higher presets, while the CPU’s robust multi-threading capabilities ensure it never becomes a bottleneck. The benchmark results show a clear hierarchy of performance that scales predictably with both resolution and quality level, offering distinct insights into where this hardware excels and where it struggles.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1080p to 4K dramatically reshapes the performance landscape for this combo. At 1080p with High settings, the system produces 62.9 FPS, but this drops to 54.9 FPS at 1440p and further to 42.5 FPS at 4K. This represents a 32.4% reduction in frame rate when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings. The scaling pattern becomes more pronounced at Ultra settings, where the system delivers 53.8 FPS at 1080p, 46.1 FPS at 1440p, and only 33.7 FPS at 4K—a 37.4% drop from the lowest to highest resolution. This steep decline indicates that the RTX 3080’s 10 GB of GDDR6X memory and 760.3 GB/s bandwidth are being saturated as pixel count increases.

Interestingly, the Low settings preset shows a much shallower scaling curve. At Low, the system achieves 140.7 FPS at 1080p, 121.2 FPS at 1440p, and 95.8 FPS at 4K. The relative drop from 1080p to 4K at Low is only 31.9%, but the absolute frame rates remain far higher, suggesting the GPU is still the limiting factor but with more headroom. The data implies that at 4K Ultra, the rendering load exceeds what the GPU can comfortably handle, while at 1080p Low, the system approaches the CPU’s practical ceiling for this game. The Medium preset offers a middle ground, with 91.4 FPS at 1080p, 73.6 FPS at 1440p, and 60.5 FPS at 4K, showing that even a mid-tier preset keeps frame rates playable across all resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows reveal that Medium settings provide the most balanced experience for this hardware combination. At 1080p Medium, the system delivers 91.4 FPS, which is 45.3% higher than High settings at the same resolution. More importantly, Medium at 4K produces 60.5 FPS, which is a playable threshold for many users, whereas High drops to 42.5 FPS and Ultra falls to 33.7 FPS. The data suggests that Medium represents the sweet spot where the RTX 3080’s 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 465.1 GTexel/s texture rate are utilized efficiently without overwhelming the memory subsystem.

For users prioritizing higher visual fidelity, High settings at 1440p (54.9 FPS) may be preferable to Ultra at 1080p (53.8 FPS), as the former offers more resolution with nearly identical frame rates. Ultra settings appear to be the least efficient choice, as the jump from High to Ultra at 1080p only costs 9.1 FPS, but at 4K the penalty is more severe—a drop from 42.5 to 33.7 FPS. Low settings, while producing the highest frame rates (140.7 FPS at 1080p), likely sacrifice too much visual quality for horror atmosphere, making Medium the recommended starting point. The data indicates that this combo can comfortably handle Medium at 4K and High at 1440p, making those the most practical presets.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 brings substantial multi-threading capability to this pairing, with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture. Its Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 20655 and single-core score of 2916 demonstrate strong processing power, and the 84th percentile ranking among all CPUs suggests it is well above average. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 6628 versus the max-thread score of 6617 shows that the CPU scales nearly perfectly with thread count, indicating efficient multi-core utilization. In The Medium, this translates to consistent frame delivery, as the CPU’s 16 threads can handle the game’s background simulation and streaming tasks without spiking.

The CPU’s boost clock of 4.60 GHz and base clock of 3.70 GHz provide adequate single-thread performance, as evidenced by the 3DMark single-thread score of 901. However, the game’s frame rates are clearly not CPU-bound at higher settings, since the FPS drops align closely with increased GPU load. The nearest rivals include the Intel Core i9-9900K with an average score of 27043 (0.7% delta), showing that this Ryzen 7 5700 is competitive with older flagship processors. The 65W TDP and 16 MB of L3 cache suggest efficient power delivery and data handling, which likely helps maintain stable frame pacing in a horror game that may load assets dynamically. The CPU’s performance in PassMark multi-thread tests (24303) further confirms its capability to avoid bottlenecks.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS achievable with this combo?

A: The highest measured frame rate is 140.7 FPS at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This drops to 121.2 FPS at 2560x1440 and 95.8 FPS at 3840x2160 under the same Low preset.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in The Medium?

A: Yes, but with limitations. At 4K Medium, the combo delivers 60.5 FPS, while High produces 42.5 FPS and Ultra only 33.7 FPS. The 4K Low preset achieves 95.8 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its nearest rival?

A: The Ryzen 7 5700 has an average benchmark score of 27220, which is 0.7% higher than the Intel Core i9-9900K (27043) and 1.2% higher than the AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 (26909).

Q: What is the performance difference between High and Ultra settings?

A: At 1080p, High delivers 62.9 FPS versus 53.8 FPS for Ultra, a difference of 9.1 FPS. At 1440p, the gap is 8.8 FPS (54.9 vs 46.1), and at 4K, the gap widens to 8.8 FPS (42.5 vs 33.7).

Q: Does the GPU support modern APIs?

A: Yes, the RTX 3080 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, which are all relevant for contemporary game engines.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The combo ranks 487th out of 1689 tested combinations, placing it in the top 28.8% of all configurations in the database for The Medium.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 is the dominant component in this analysis, with its 10 GB of GDDR6X memory and 320-bit bus providing 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU’s 8704 shading units and 96 ROPs drive a pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s, which is critical for high-resolution rendering. The 68 RT cores and 272 tensor cores enable advanced effects, though their impact on The Medium’s measured FPS is indirect. The GPU’s boost clock of 1710 MHz and base clock of 1440 MHz represent a modest frequency range, but the 29.77 TFLOPS of FP32 compute ensures substantial rasterization throughput.

The GPU’s 80th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 35787 place it close to rivals like the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (35860, -0.2% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (36101, -0.9% delta). In The Medium, the GPU’s memory bandwidth becomes a critical factor at 4K Ultra, where the 33.7 FPS result suggests the 10 GB VRAM is being stressed. The PassMark G3D score of 25086 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 167014 indicate strong compute capabilities that translate to the measured frame rates. The GPU’s 320W TDP and dual-slot design suggest it runs hot under load, but the performance data shows it remains capable of handling Medium settings at 4K with a 60.5 FPS result.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo produces a wide spread of performance: 140.7 FPS on Low, 91.4 FPS on Medium, 62.9 FPS on High, and 53.8 FPS on Ultra. This represents a 61.7% difference between the lowest and highest quality presets. The 1440p resolution shows a similar pattern with 121.2 FPS on Low, 73.6 FPS on Medium, 54.9 FPS on High, and 46.1 FPS on Ultra. At 3840x2160, the frame rates compress further: 95.8 FPS on Low, 60.5 FPS on Medium, 42.5 FPS on High, and 33.7 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra widens with resolution, going from 86.9 FPS at 1080p to 62.1 FPS at 4K, indicating that the GPU’s workload increases disproportionately with pixel count.

The Medium preset consistently delivers roughly 65% of the Low preset’s performance across all resolutions, while Ultra delivers only about 38% of Low’s frame rate. This data suggests that the game’s Ultra preset includes effects that are particularly taxing on the RTX 3080’s memory subsystem. The High preset sits between Medium and Ultra, typically delivering 45-50% of Low’s performance. The most notable anomaly is the 4K Medium result of 60.5 FPS, which is only slightly below the 1080p High result of 62.9 FPS, showing that resolution scaling is not always linear when settings are adjusted.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 combination ranks 487th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the upper third of all configurations. This rank reflects a balanced pairing where neither component dramatically bottlenecks the other. The CPU’s 84th percentile ranking among all processors and the GPU’s 80th percentile ranking suggest both are above average, but the combo’s 28.8% percentile placement indicates that many other configurations achieve higher frame rates in this specific game. This could be due to the RTX 3080’s 10 GB VRAM being insufficient for the highest settings at high resolutions, or the game’s optimization favoring other hardware architectures.

Relative to its nearest rivals, the CPU performs within 1.2% of similarly scored processors, and the GPU is within 1% of its closest competitors. This indicates that the combo’s rank is not due to any single weak component but rather the combination’s overall throughput. The 1689 tested combos include many with newer or higher-end parts, so a rank of 487 is respectable for hardware released in this generation. The data implies that while this system is not at the top tier, it offers consistent, predictable performance across all resolutions and settings, making it a reliable choice for playing The Medium at Medium-to-High settings.