The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 delivers a strong, playable experience in The Medium, but the data reveals a clear bottleneck: this combination ranks 390th out of 3,724 tested combos, placing it in the top 10.5% of all configurations. The RTX 4080 proves dominant, with the most demanding 4K Ultra setting yielding 45 FPS while the 1080p Low setting hits 138 FPS, demonstrating that the GPU has ample headroom across the board. However, the CPU’s performance, while adequate, shows its limits at lower resolutions where frame rates scale less aggressively than the GPU’s raw power would suggest.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and setting combo for this hardware?

A: At 1440p High, the system averages 72 FPS, which is a balanced sweet spot between visual fidelity and smoothness. For maximum fluidity, 1080p Low achieves 138 FPS, while 4K High hits 57 FPS for a crisp but less consistent experience.

Q: How does the RTX 4080’s 16 GB VRAM affect 4K performance?

A: The 16 GB GDDR6X memory, with a 716.8 GB/s bandwidth, is more than sufficient for The Medium at 4K. The data shows a 30 FPS gap between 4K Low (120 FPS) and 4K High (57 FPS), indicating that settings, not VRAM capacity, are the primary constraint.

Q: Is the Ryzen 7 5700 holding back the RTX 4080 in this game?

A: Yes, particularly at 1080p, where the CPU’s 8 cores and 16 threads (with a boost clock of 4.60 GHz) start to limit scaling. The FPS jump from 1080p High (86 FPS) to 1080p Low (138 FPS) is 52 FPS, but the GPU could likely push higher if the CPU had more single-thread headroom.

Q: What is the frame time consistency like at medium settings?

A: The data shows 1080p Medium ranges from 98 FPS to 132 FPS (average 115), while 1440p Medium spans 86 FPS to 116 FPS (average 101). This indicates a consistent 15-20 FPS variance, which is typical for a horror title with dynamic loading.

Q: How does this combo rank against other tested configurations?

A: It ranks 390 out of 3,724 combos, meaning roughly 89.5% of tested systems perform worse. This top-decile placement is driven by the RTX 4080, which sits in the 86th percentile of all GPUs.

Q: Can this system handle 4K Ultra settings?

A: Barely—it averages 45 FPS at 4K Ultra. This is playable but below the 60 FPS target, and the data suggests dropping to High (57 FPS) or Medium (79 FPS) for a smoother experience.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the dominant component in this pairing, and its specifications explain why. With a base clock of 2205 MHz and a boost clock of 2505 MHz, it maintains high throughput across all test scenarios. The 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus provides 716.8 GB/s of bandwidth, which is critical for The Medium’s detailed environments and high-resolution textures. The GPU’s 76 RT cores and 304 tensor cores also support the game’s lighting effects, though the measured FPS data shows that traditional rasterization performance is the main driver.

The GPU’s raw compute power—48.74 TFLOPS FP32—translates directly into the FPS numbers. At 1080p Low, the RTX 4080 delivers 138 FPS, but this is likely constrained by the CPU. When moving to 1440p, the GPU takes over more of the workload, and the FPS drops to 130 at Low settings. At 4K, the GPU is fully engaged, with the data showing a linear scaling from 4K Medium (79 FPS) to 4K Ultra (45 FPS), a 34 FPS difference that reflects the increasing shader and memory pressure. The GPU’s 86th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54,247, confirms that it is a top-tier part, and the measured results in The Medium align with that standing.

How This Combo Ranks

The comboRankInGame places this system at 390 out of 3,724 tested combinations, which is a strong result. This ranking is heavily influenced by the RTX 4080, which outperforms its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks. The GPU’s closest competitor, the RTX 4080 SUPER, has an average score of 54,209, just 0.1% behind the standard 4080’s 54,247. This marginal delta suggests that in The Medium, the 4080 is effectively on par with the SUPER variant, and the 390th rank reflects this parity.

The CPU also contributes to the ranking, but to a lesser extent. The Ryzen 7 5700 has an average benchmark score of 25,517, placing it in the 78th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the Intel Xeon D-2752TER, scores 25,530, a 0.1% difference, which means the CPU is not a differentiator. The data indicates that the combo’s top-decile placement is almost entirely due to the GPU. In practical terms, this system will outperform the vast majority of setups in The Medium, but it won’t top the charts because the CPU’s single-thread performance (3dmark_single_thread score of 901) limits extreme frame rates at low resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings levels. At 1080p, the system averages 138 FPS on Low, 115 FPS on Medium, 86 FPS on High, and 68 FPS on Ultra. The Medium setting’s range of 98-132 FPS shows a 34 FPS variance, indicating frame pacing issues under load. At 1440p, the numbers drop to 130 FPS (Low), 101 FPS (Medium), 72 FPS (High), and 57 FPS (Ultra). The 1440p Medium range of 86-116 FPS is tighter than at 1080p, suggesting the GPU is becoming the limiting factor.

At 4K, the performance scales as expected: 120 FPS on Low, 79 FPS on Medium, 57 FPS on High, and 45 FPS on Ultra. The 4K Medium range of 67-91 FPS (a 24 FPS spread) is the most stable of all settings, which is notable for a horror game with unpredictable scene complexity. The gap between 4K Low and 4K Ultra is 75 FPS, a massive drop that reflects the GPU’s workload doubling as texture and shading quality increase. The 1080p Ultra result of 68 FPS is surprisingly close to the 1440p Ultra result of 57 FPS, with just an 11 FPS difference, indicating that at Ultra settings, the GPU is already saturated at 1080p.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals where the bottleneck lies. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 138 (1080p) to 130 (1440p) to 120 (4K), a total reduction of 13% from 1080p to 4K. This mild scaling indicates that at Low settings, the CPU is the limiting factor—the GPU has enough headroom to handle 4K without a proportional FPS penalty. In contrast, at Ultra settings, the FPS drops from 68 (1080p) to 57 (1440p) to 45 (4K), a 34% reduction. This steep decline shows that at Ultra, the GPU is fully engaged, and resolution scaling directly impacts performance.

The Medium settings tell a similar story: 115 FPS at 1080p, 101 FPS at 1440p, and 79 FPS at 4K, with a 31% drop from 1080p to 4K. The data suggests that the CPU can maintain around 115-138 FPS at lower resolutions, but once the GPU workload increases beyond that threshold, the frame rate becomes GPU-bound. The 1080p to 1440p scaling at Medium (14 FPS drop) is less than the 1440p to 4K scaling (22 FPS drop), confirming that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and compute become the primary constraints as resolution rises. For a horror game like The Medium, this means players targeting 60 FPS should stick to 1440p High or 4K Medium, while those with high-refresh monitors can push 1080p Low for maximum smoothness.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700 is a 5000-series chip with 8 cores and 16 threads, based on the Zen 3 architecture (Cezanne). Its base clock is 3.70 GHz, boosting to 4.60 GHz, and it has a 65 W TDP. The CPU’s cache configuration includes 64 KB L1 per core, 512 KB L2 per core, and a 16 MB L3 cache, which is adequate for gaming workloads. In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU scores 20,655 in Cinebench R23 multicore and 2,916 in single-core, placing it in the 78th percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 5 7640U, scores 25,485, a 0.1% difference, showing that the 5700 is a solid mid-range performer.

In The Medium, the CPU’s role is most evident at 1080p Low, where it achieves 138 FPS. This is likely near the CPU’s maximum frame output, as the 3dmark_2_threads score of 1,762 indicates moderate single-thread capability. The 16 MB L3 cache helps with the game’s data streaming, but the lack of a vCache (3D V-Cache) option means it can’t match the gaming-specific performance of some rivals. The data shows that at 1080p, the FPS ceiling is around 138 FPS, regardless of GPU headroom. At 1440p and 4K, the CPU becomes less of a factor, and the GPU takes over. The CPU’s 16 threads are more than enough for The Medium, which is not heavily multithreaded, and the 3dmark_16_threads score of 6,628 confirms it can handle concurrent background tasks without impacting frame rates.