The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 delivers a varied performance profile in The Medium, with frame rates that shift dramatically based on resolution and quality preset. The data shows a system capable of high refresh rates at lower settings, but one that struggles to maintain smooth gameplay at maximum visual fidelity in higher resolutions. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS across the 12 recorded configurations to identify where the bottleneck lies and which settings offer the best balance.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all quality presets, revealing a heavy reliance on the GPU's rendering capabilities. At High settings, the average frame rate falls from 65.7 FPS at 1920x1080 to 54.9 FPS at 2560x1440, a reduction of 10.8 FPS, before dropping further to 40.9 FPS at 3840x2160. This represents a 37.7% decrease in performance from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the RX 9070 is the primary limiting factor as pixel count rises.

The scaling pattern is even more pronounced at Ultra settings. The transition from 1080p to 1440p sees the average drop from 47.5 FPS to 40.6 FPS, but the jump to 4K is harsh, plummeting to 32.7 FPS. This 31.2% loss from 1440p to 4K suggests that the game's Ultra preset introduces effects that are disproportionately expensive at higher resolutions, likely related to memory bandwidth demands or shader complexity.

At Low settings, the system shows its strongest scaling behavior. The 1080p result of 136.7 FPS falls to 118.7 FPS at 1440p, then to 92.7 FPS at 4K. The relative drop from 1080p to 4K is 32.2%, which is slightly less severe than at High settings. This indicates that when graphical load is minimized, the CPU has enough headroom to keep feeding the GPU, but the GPU still becomes the constraint as resolution increases.

The data suggests that the 5800X3D's 96 MB of shared L3 cache provides ample CPU performance even at 1080p, as the frame rates there are high enough to avoid a CPU bottleneck. The consistent degradation across all presets points to the RX 9070's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and its 644.6 GB/s bandwidth being the determining factor for 4K performance, where the game demands more data throughput than the GPU can efficiently deliver at higher settings.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows provide a clear hierarchy of performance, and the optimal preset depends heavily on the target resolution. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 85.6 FPS, which is a 30.3% improvement over High's 65.7 FPS, while still offering a substantial visual upgrade over Low's 136.7 FPS. For players seeking a smooth experience at 1080p, Medium is the sweet spot, providing nearly 60 FPS more headroom than Ultra's 47.5 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the situation becomes more demanding. The Medium preset yields 77.2 FPS, which is a playable frame rate for most titles, but High drops to 54.9 FPS, and Ultra falls to 40.6 FPS. The data indicates that Medium is the highest preset that maintains a consistent 60 FPS or above at this resolution, making it the recommended choice for a balanced experience.

For 4K resolution, the options narrow considerably. The Low preset achieves 92.7 FPS, which is surprisingly playable, but the visual compromise is significant. Medium drops to 59 FPS, which is borderline acceptable for a horror game that may not require high refresh rates, but High and Ultra fall to 40.9 FPS and 32.7 FPS respectively, both of which are below the threshold for smooth gameplay. The recommendation here is to use Medium at 4K if visual quality is a priority, or Low if frame rate consistency is more important.

The Ultra preset appears to be poorly optimized for this hardware combination, as it delivers less than 50 FPS at every resolution above 1080p. Given that High at 1080p produces 65.7 FPS, the jump to Ultra only adds a marginal visual benefit while costing over 27% performance. The data supports choosing High over Ultra unless the user is willing to accept sub-40 FPS at higher resolutions.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is the defining component in this configuration's gaming performance. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial but clearly taxed by The Medium's requirements at 4K Ultra. The GPU's boost clock of 2520 MHz and game clock of 2070 MHz are relatively high, yet the measured frame rates at Ultra settings suggest that the architecture's raw throughput is insufficient for the game's most demanding scenes.

The GPU's 3584 shading units and 128 ROPs contribute to a pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s, which should theoretically handle 4K rendering, but the benchmark results tell a different story. The 32.7 FPS at 4K Ultra indicates that the RX 9070 is operating near its limits, with the game likely utilizing the full 16 GB memory capacity and pushing the memory controller to its maximum.

The performance difference between Low and Ultra at each resolution is telling. At 1080p, the gap is 89.2 FPS (136.7 vs 47.5), which is a 65.3% reduction. At 4K, the gap narrows to 60 FPS (92.7 vs 32.7), a 64.7% reduction. This consistency suggests that the GPU's shader and memory resources scale linearly with the preset changes, but the absolute performance at 4K is constrained by the memory bandwidth, as evidenced by the 20.1 Gbps effective memory clock.

The GPU's DirectX 12 Ultimate support and 12_2 feature level are relevant for a 2021 game like The Medium, but the benchmark scores in synthetic tests, such as the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 6290, do not translate directly to this game's real-world performance. The data shows a GPU that is powerful for 1080p and 1440p gaming but falls short of delivering a consistently smooth 4K experience at high presets.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this CPU-GPU combo in The Medium?

A: The data shows 1920x1080 as the most consistent resolution, with all presets delivering above 47 FPS. At 2560x1440, Medium achieves 77.2 FPS, making it a viable option, while 4K is only playable at Low or Medium settings.

Q: How does the RX 9070's 16 GB VRAM affect performance?

A: The 16 GB capacity is sufficient for the game, as no memory exhaustion is indicated, but the 644.6 GB/s bandwidth appears to be a limiting factor at 4K Ultra, where the frame rate drops to 32.7 FPS.

Q: Is the Ultra preset ever worth using?

A: According to the measurements, Ultra only exceeds 40 FPS at 1080p (47.5 FPS). At 1440p and 4K, it falls to 40.6 FPS and 32.7 FPS respectively, making it unsuitable for smooth gameplay outside of 1080p.

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

A: Yes, but with caveats. The Low preset achieves 92.7 FPS, and Medium reaches 59 FPS, while High and Ultra produce 40.9 FPS and 32.7 FPS, which are below ideal playable thresholds.

Q: How much performance is lost when moving from High to Ultra?

A: At 1080p, Ultra is 27.7% slower than High (47.5 vs 65.7 FPS). At 1440p, the drop is 26.1% (40.6 vs 54.9 FPS), and at 4K, it is 20.1% (32.7 vs 40.9 FPS), showing diminishing returns as resolution increases.

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

A: The data indicates the GPU is the bottleneck, as frame rates at Low (136.7 FPS) are high enough to suggest the CPU can push more, but the gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p is 89.2 FPS, highlighting GPU limits.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific pairing of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Radeon RX 9070 ranks 542 out of 1689 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the 67.9th percentile of all configurations. This is a respectable position, indicating that the combo performs better than roughly two-thirds of the systems in the database, though it is not among the elite setups for this title.

The CPU's percentile ranking of 83 among all processors, with an average benchmark score of 26574, shows it is a strong performer, sitting close to rivals like the AMD EPYC 8024P (26555, 0.1% faster) and Intel Core i9-11900K (26546, 0.1% faster). The GPU's percentile of 79, with an average score of 34780, places it slightly below the NVIDIA A2 (34866, -0.2% slower) and above the AMD Radeon HD 7970 (34541, 0.7% faster), showing it is a mid-to-high tier graphics card.

The combo's rank of 542 suggests that while both components are individually strong, their combined performance in The Medium is held back by the game's specific requirements. The 5800X3D's 8 cores and 16 threads, with a boost clock of 4.50 GHz, are more than sufficient for this title, but the RX 9070's 4 nm process and 53,900 million transistors do not translate to top-tier frame rates at 4K Ultra. The ranking places this system in the upper-middle tier, capable of handling the game well at 1080p and 1440p, but not a top performer for maximum settings at high resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D plays a supporting role in this configuration, providing enough computational power to avoid becoming the limiting factor in most scenarios. Its 8 cores and 16 threads, based on the Zen 3 architecture with a 7 nm process, deliver strong multi-threaded performance, as evidenced by a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 24063 and a Geekbench multicore score of 11061. The CPU's 96 MB of shared L3 cache is a unique feature that helps in gaming workloads, though The Medium's reliance on GPU rendering means this advantage is less pronounced.

The CPU's boost clock of 4.50 GHz and base clock of 3.40 GHz provide sufficient single-thread performance, with a 3DMark single-thread score of 884 and a Passmark single-thread score of 3234. This is adequate for a horror game that likely does not require extreme CPU throughput, but the data shows no evidence of a CPU bottleneck even at 1080p Low, where the frame rate reaches 136.7 FPS.

The 5800X3D's memory support for DDR4 with a dual-channel configuration and 51.2 GB/s bandwidth is a potential limitation, but it does not appear to impact The Medium's performance. The CPU's TDP of 105 W and 8,850 million transistors on a 74 mm² die show a power-efficient design, yet the game's frame rates are consistently GPU-bound. The CPU's nearest rivals, such as the AMD Ryzen 5 7600 (avgScore 26617, -0.2% delta), perform nearly identically in synthetic benchmarks, indicating that the 5800X3D is not a differentiator in this title. The data suggests that upgrading the CPU would yield minimal gains in The Medium, as the RX 9070 is the component that determines the final frame rates across all tested settings.