The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on a dual-reality rendering engine, presents a distinctive workload. Benchmark data for the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination reveals a system that is decisively GPU-bound at higher resolutions, yet shows surprising CPU sensitivity at 1080p. The measured frames per second across the four quality presets provide a clear picture of where this hardware pairing excels and where it struggles, particularly when targeting the game's Ultra preset.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all presets, confirming that the AMD Radeon RX 9070 becomes the primary limiting factor as pixel count rises. At the High preset, average FPS falls from 62.7 at 1920x1080 to 50.4 at 2560x1440, a 19.6% reduction, and then drops further to 40.1 at 3840x2160, representing a 36% decrease from the 1080p baseline. This scaling pattern is typical of a GPU struggling with the increased fill-rate demands of 4K rendering, especially in a game that often renders two perspectives simultaneously.

The scaling is even more pronounced at the Ultra preset, where the frame rate plummets from 51.6 at 1080p to 45.2 at 1440p and then to a barely playable 31.1 at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is 39.7% slower than the 1080p Ultra result, indicating that the RX 9070's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 644.6 GB/s bandwidth are being saturated by the game's high-resolution textures and effects. Interestingly, the Low preset shows the least dramatic scaling: 139.6 FPS at 1080p versus 93.3 at 4K, a 33.2% drop. This suggests that even when graphical load is minimized, the GPU architecture still dictates the upper bounds of performance.

The data indicates that the sweet spot for 4K gaming on this combo is the Low preset, which maintains an average above 90 FPS. The Medium preset at 4K delivers 56.8 FPS, which is playable but requires a compromise on visual fidelity. The gap between Medium and High at 4K is notable, with the High preset costing an additional 16.7 FPS, demonstrating that the game's higher-tier effects have a disproportionate impact on the GPU. This is not a system that can brute-force its way to high refresh rates at 4K; it requires settings management to achieve a smooth experience.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience for this hardware combination, serving as the recommended starting point for most users. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 86.7 FPS, which is 38.3% faster than the High preset's 62.7 FPS, while still maintaining a significant visual upgrade over Low. The jump from Low to Medium at 1080p costs 52.9 FPS (from 139.6 to 86.7), but the visual fidelity gains in a horror title with heavy atmosphere are substantial.

For users with 1440p displays, Medium is the clear choice, delivering 74 FPS. This sits comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold and provides a marked improvement over the High preset's 50.4 FPS. Pushing to Ultra at 1440p yields 45.2 FPS, which is a 38.9% drop from Medium and likely too inconsistent for a game that relies on tension and timing. The High preset at 1440p is a viable option for those who prioritize image quality over a perfect frame rate, but the data shows that the cost-benefit ratio favors Medium.

At 4K, the recommendation shifts dramatically. Ultra is effectively unplayable at 31.1 FPS, and High is marginal at 40.1 FPS. Medium at 56.8 FPS is the only preset that approaches a console-like experience, but it still falls short of the 60 FPS target. The data strongly suggests that 4K users should either select the Medium preset or drop to Low, which delivers a very smooth 93.3 FPS. The benchmark results indicate that the RX 9070's 36.13 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is insufficient to handle the game's Ultra preset at high resolutions, making Medium the pragmatic ceiling for a 60 FPS experience across all resolution classes.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, with its 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture, provides a robust foundation for The Medium. The processor's 3.80 GHz base clock and 4.70 GHz boost clock are leveraged effectively, but the benchmark data reveals that the game is not heavily multi-threaded in a way that stresses this CPU. The processor's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 23571 and single-core score of 3327 indicate substantial headroom, and the measured FPS deltas between presets suggest that the CPU is rarely the bottleneck.

Evidence for this lies in the scaling from 1080p to 4K. At the Low preset, the frame rate drops from 139.6 FPS at 1080p to 93.3 FPS at 4K. If the CPU were the limiting factor at 1080p, this drop would be less severe, as the GPU would have more headroom. Instead, the 33.2% reduction indicates that the GPU's workload is increasing as expected, and the CPU is not impeding progress. The 3DMark 16-thread score of 7586 and the 8-thread score of 6035 show that the processor scales well with thread count, but The Medium appears to utilize only a fraction of that capability.

The single-threaded performance, as measured by the 3DMark single-thread score of 943, is adequate for the game's logic and camera systems. However, the data shows that the processor's role is to feed the GPU without causing stutters, rather than to push frame rates higher. The Ryzen 7 5800X's 32 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR4 memory support at 51.2 GB/s are sufficient for this title. It is a capable air-cooled processor in this context, but its performance percentile of 84 versus all CPUs does not translate into a gaming advantage here, as the RX 9070's output is the deciding factor in nearly every measurable scenario.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database's tested combinations, this specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and AMD Radeon RX 9070 achieves a combo rank of 548 out of 1689 total combos for The Medium. This placement in the 67.6th percentile (calculated from the rank and total) indicates that while the hardware is competent, it does not sit at the top tier of tested systems for this particular game. The ranking suggests that many other combinations, likely featuring more powerful GPUs or newer CPU architectures, are capable of producing higher average frame rates.

The GPU's individual performance percentile of 79 versus all GPUs is higher than the combo's overall rank, which reinforces the conclusion that the graphics card is the stronger component in this pairing. The CPU's percentile of 84 is also high, yet the combination does not crack the top half of the tested combos, implying that The Medium's engine may not scale perfectly with this specific hardware mix. The nearest rivals for the CPU, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 5800 with a deltaPct of 0.3%, are functionally identical in performance, indicating that the 5800X's unlocked multiplier and slightly higher clocks offer negligible real-world gains in this title.

The combo rank of 548 places this system in the upper-middle tier of the database. It outperforms a significant number of older or lower-spec combos, but it is clearly outclassed by systems with top-tier graphics cards. The data suggests that users with this combo should not expect top-tier 4K performance, but rather a solid 1440p experience with adjustments to settings. The rank also implies that the system is well-balanced, as neither component is drastically underperforming relative to the other, but the overall result is constrained by the game's demanding rendering requirements.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is the dominant component in this system, and its characteristics directly shape the gaming experience in The Medium. The GPU's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, is a critical asset for a game that often needs to load two separate camera views. However, the benchmark results show that even this capacity is not enough to maintain high frame rates at the Ultra preset across all resolutions, with the 4K Ultra result falling to 31.1 FPS.

The GPU's clock speeds, with a boost clock of 2520 MHz and a game clock of 2070 MHz, provide the raw compute power, but the data indicates that the limiting factor is not raw shader throughput but rather the memory subsystem and the game's engine efficiency. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290 places the GPU in a competitive position, but its nearest rivals in the database, such as the NVIDIA A2 with a deltaPct of -0.2%, are not gaming-focused parts, illustrating that the benchmark averages are not always representative of gaming performance.

The performance scaling across presets is the clearest indicator of the GPU's role. At 1080p, the RX 9070 can deliver 139.6 FPS on Low, but this drops to 51.6 FPS on Ultra, a 63% reduction. This massive performance penalty for the Ultra preset suggests that the game's highest settings include effects that are particularly demanding on RDNA 4.0 architecture, such as ray-traced shadows or advanced volumetric lighting. The pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s and texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s are high, but they are not sufficient to overcome the engine's demands at 4K with high settings. The GPU's role is to provide a playable experience at Medium settings, and the data shows that it succeeds in this role, but it cannot dominate the game's most demanding presets.