The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X paired with the AMD Radeon RX 570 delivers a playable experience in The Medium only at the lowest settings and resolution, with the data clearly showing a system that is heavily constrained by the graphics card at every step. This combo ranks in the 3557th position out of 3724 tested configurations, placing it in the bottom 5% of all recorded results for this title, which signals that while the CPU is a strong modern part, the GPU is simply outclassed by the demands of this horror game.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a brutal and predictable collapse as resolution increases, which is a textbook sign of a GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo manages an average of 44 FPS, which drops to 37 FPS at 1440p and then falls to 29 FPS at 4K. That represents a 34% performance loss from 1080p to 4K on Low settings, but the absolute numbers are more telling: even at the easiest settings, the system never reaches a smooth 60 FPS at any resolution.

The scaling pattern becomes even more severe when moving from Medium to High settings. At 1080p Medium, the average is 28 FPS, dropping to 23 FPS at 1440p and 18 FPS at 4K. The gap between Low and Medium at the same resolution is substantial — a 36% reduction at 1080p — which indicates that the RX 570’s limited compute and memory bandwidth are being saturated by even modest increases in visual fidelity. The 4K Ultra result of 10 FPS is essentially a slideshow, and the 4K High result of 13 FPS is not far behind, confirming that this resolution is entirely impractical for this combination.

What is most telling is that the FPS drops are not linear with pixel count. From 1080p to 1440p on Low settings, the loss is only 7 FPS (44 to 37), but from 1440p to 4K, the loss is another 8 FPS (37 to 29). This suggests that the GPU is running out of raw throughput and memory bandwidth, as the 4K resolution demands 2.25 times the pixels of 1440p, yet the performance penalty is proportionally smaller — a sign that the bottleneck is shifting from pixel filling to shader work and texture bandwidth. The data indicates that the 5800X is never the limiting factor here; the RX 570 is the sole reason why the frame rates crater so quickly.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 570 is built on the Polaris 20 chip using the GCN 4.0 architecture, which is an older design that lacks modern features like hardware ray tracing. Its specs are modest for today’s standards: 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs, running at a base clock of 1168 MHz and a boost clock of 1244 MHz. The memory subsystem consists of 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, providing 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This is a critical weakness for The Medium, as the game’s high-resolution textures and effects can easily exceed 4 GB of VRAM, causing the GPU to spill over into system memory and tank performance.

The benchmark data reflects this VRAM pressure. At 1080p Ultra, the average FPS is 16, which is only 20% higher than the 4K Ultra result of 10 FPS. This unusually small gap between resolutions at Ultra settings strongly suggests that the GPU is hitting a memory capacity wall, not a compute wall. The 4K High result of 13 FPS versus the 1080p High result of 20 FPS shows a 35% drop, but the Ultra settings show only a 37.5% drop from 1080p to 4K, which is far less than the pixel count increase would predict. The conclusion is that at Ultra, the RX 570 is already swapping textures at 1080p, so adding more pixels doesn’t worsen the bottleneck as much as it would if VRAM were sufficient.

The GPU’s average benchmark score of 28766 places it in the 74th percentile of all GPUs, but its nearest rivals in the database include the AMD Radeon RX 470 (deltaPct -0.8%) and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 (deltaPct 1.2%), which shows that the RX 570 is in a performance tier that is barely above entry-level for modern gaming. The Geekbench OpenCL score of 32084 and Vulkan score of 42752 are indicative of a card that can handle basic workloads but struggles with sustained heavy loads. In The Medium, the data shows that the GPU is the primary bottleneck at every resolution above 1080p Low, and even at 1080p Low, it cannot maintain a consistent 60 FPS, with the average sitting at 44 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a Zen 3 (Vermeer) part with 8 cores and 16 threads, running at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.70 GHz, with a 32 MB L3 cache. This is a powerful CPU that ranks in the 81st percentile of all processors, with an average benchmark score of 29123. Its nearest rivals include the Intel Core Ultra 5 135H (deltaPct 0.1%) and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT (deltaPct 0.6%), which shows that the 5800X is competitive with modern mid-range and high-end mobile chips, despite being from an older generation. In multi-threaded workloads, the Cinebench R23 multicore score of 15476 confirms that this CPU can handle any game that throws heavy physics or AI at it.

However, the measured FPS data in The Medium shows that the 5800X’s power is largely wasted in this pairing. The frame rates are consistently low across all settings, and the pattern of results — where lowering resolution from 4K to 1080p only improves FPS by a moderate amount — indicates that the CPU is not the limiting factor. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar frame rates at 1080p and 4K, as the CPU workload does not scale with resolution. Instead, the FPS nearly doubles from 4K Low (29 FPS) to 1080p Low (44 FPS), which is a clear sign that the GPU is doing most of the heavy lifting and failing at it.

The CPU’s single-threaded performance, as shown by the PassMark single-thread score of 3445 and the 3DMark single-thread score of 943, is more than adequate for The Medium, which is not a notoriously CPU-intensive title. The game’s fixed camera angles and scripted sequences put more strain on the GPU’s ability to render complex scenes with volumetric fog and lighting, rather than on the CPU’s ability to calculate game logic. Therefore, the 5800X is effectively idle in this configuration, waiting for the RX 570 to catch up. If the GPU were upgraded, the 5800X would have plenty of headroom to push much higher frame rates, but with the current pairing, the CPU’s capabilities are entirely untapped.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 3557 out of 3724 total tested combinations places this system in the bottom 4.5% of all results for The Medium. This is a poor ranking that reflects the GPU’s age and limitations, not the CPU’s. The 5800X is a top-tier processor from its generation, but the RX 570 is an entry-level card from 2017, and the data shows that the GPU drags the entire combo down to the lowest tiers of performance. In practical terms, this means that the vast majority of other CPU-GPU pairings tested by the database will outperform this one, often by a significant margin.

The ranking also highlights that this combo is not suitable for the game’s intended experience. The Medium is a horror game that relies on atmospheric tension and visual immersion, but with this hardware, players are forced to choose between playable frame rates (1080p Low at 44 FPS) and visual quality (1080p Ultra at 16 FPS). The gap between the combo’s rank and the top performers is enormous, and the data suggests that any modern mid-range GPU would be a massive upgrade over the RX 570. However, the 5800X ensures that the platform is not the issue, so a future GPU upgrade would likely transform the system’s ranking without needing to touch the CPU.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the only viable settings for a playable experience are at 1080p with Low settings, which produces an average of 44 FPS. This is the highest average FPS recorded for this combo, and it is the only configuration that approaches a playable frame rate, though it still falls short of the 60 FPS target that most players prefer. The 1080p Medium setting yields 28 FPS, which is a significant drop and would be noticeably stuttery in a game that relies on smooth camera movements to build tension. At 1440p, the Low setting drops to 37 FPS, which is technically playable but still below the ideal threshold, and the visual fidelity gain from 1080p is minimal given the GPU’s limitations.

For players who prioritize visual quality over frame rate, the 1080p High setting at 20 FPS is the highest visual preset that remains technically playable, but it is not recommended for a game that has horror elements where responsive controls are essential. The 4K resolution is completely off the table, as even Low settings at 4K only achieve 29 FPS, which is a poor experience. The data suggests that the best balance for this combo is 1080p Low, which provides the highest frame rate and the most stable experience, as the min FPS is not recorded for Low settings, whereas Medium shows a min of 23 FPS and a max of 32 FPS, indicating some variance. The Ultra preset is a waste of resources, as the 16 FPS at 1080p is not a playable experience, and the GPU is clearly not capable of handling the extra effects.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured averages are as follows: Low delivers 44 FPS, Medium delivers 28 FPS with a min of 23 FPS and a max of 32 FPS, High delivers 20 FPS, and Ultra delivers 16 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a steep decline of 28 FPS, which is a 64% reduction in performance, highlighting how quickly the RX 570’s capabilities are exhausted. The Medium setting’s frame time variance, with a 9 FPS spread between min and max, suggests that the game can stutter in heavy scenes, but the average is still more consistent than High or Ultra.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages drop to 37 FPS on Low, 23 FPS on Medium (min 20 FPS, max 27 FPS), 17 FPS on High, and 13 FPS on Ultra. The transition from 1080p to 1440p costs roughly 16-20% of the frame rate at each setting, which is less than the 25% pixel increase would imply, indicating that the GPU is already struggling with memory bandwidth at 1080p. At 1440p, the Low setting is the only one that approaches a playable frame rate, and even then, it is borderline. The High and Ultra settings are effectively unplayable, with frame rates below 20 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the results are catastrophic: Low averages 29 FPS, Medium averages 18 FPS (min 15 FPS, max 21 FPS), High averages 13 FPS, and Ultra averages 10 FPS. The 4K Low result is the highest at this resolution, but it is still a poor experience that would be difficult to play for any extended period. The difference between 4K Low and 4K Ultra is only 19 FPS, but the visual quality difference is substantial, which means the GPU is so constrained that even the lowest settings cannot produce a smooth frame rate. The data shows that this combo is only suitable for 1080p Low, and any attempt to increase resolution or settings will result in a subpar experience.