The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding dual-reality rendering load that heavily taxes both GPU and CPU. For this specific configuration, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, the benchmark data clearly indicates that the Medium settings preset offers the most balanced experience, providing a playable frame rate across all tested resolutions while maintaining visual fidelity. The data shows a clear hierarchy in performance scaling, with the RTX 5060's 8 GB of VRAM and the CPU's multi-threading capabilities playing distinct roles in determining the final output.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal settings preset for this hardware combination is Medium. This is the only preset that provides a consistently playable experience across all three tested resolutions, with the data showing an average of 72 FPS at 1920x1080, 61 FPS at 2560x1440, and 48 FPS at 3840x2160. The Medium preset is the only one that maintains an average frame rate above 60 FPS at 1080p and remains above the critical 30 FPS threshold at 4K, making it the most versatile choice for users who may switch between monitors or resolutions.

The High preset presents a significant compromise, with the data showing a 28% performance drop at 1080p (52 FPS vs. 72 FPS) and a 29% drop at 1440p (44 FPS vs. 61 FPS) when compared to Medium. At 4K, the High preset dips to 34 FPS, which is below the smoothness threshold for many users. The Ultra preset is largely impractical for this GPU, as the data indicates it only achieves 41 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p, and a stutter-prone 27 FPS at 4K. The Low preset offers the highest frame rates—116 FPS at 1080p, 97 FPS at 1440p, and 76 FPS at 4K—but it sacrifices the visual atmosphere that is crucial to a horror title like The Medium.

Benchmark results show that the Medium preset provides the best balance between the 52% frame rate advantage of Low over Medium at 1080p and the 29% visual quality advantage of High over Medium at the same resolution. The data suggests that Medium is the sweet spot, as it leverages the GPU's capabilities without exposing its VRAM limitations or overwhelming the CPU's threading capacity in a way that causes severe frame drops. The measured minimum FPS for Medium is 61 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p, and 41 FPS at 4K, indicating that even the worst-case frame times are acceptable for a horror experience where pacing is key.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 features 8 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 448.0 GB/s. This VRAM capacity is the primary limiting factor in The Medium at higher settings and resolutions. The game's dual-reality rendering technique, which displays two worlds simultaneously, places a heavy demand on frame buffer memory. The data supports this: at 4K Ultra, the average frame rate collapses to 27 FPS, while at 4K Medium it recovers to 48 FPS. This 44% performance difference between Ultra and Medium at 4K is far larger than the 29% difference observed at 1080p (41 FPS vs. 72 FPS), suggesting that the GPU is hitting a memory capacity wall at higher pixel counts.

The GPU's clock speeds are 2280 MHz base and 2497 MHz boost, with a pixel rate of 119.9 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 299.6 GTexel/s. These characteristics allow the RTX 5060 to handle the geometric complexity of The Medium's fixed-camera scenes, but the FP32 throughput of 19.18 TFLOPS is insufficient for the game's heavier post-processing effects at Ultra settings. The benchmark results show that the RTX 5060 scores 20891 in Passmark G3D and 3628 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 72nd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, scores 26011 (1.2% higher), while the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary scores 26553 (0.8% higher), indicating the RTX 5060 is competitive but not class-leading in raw compute.

The RTX 5060's ray tracing capabilities, with 30 RT cores and support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, do not appear to provide a significant advantage in this title based on the measured data. The game's performance scaling from Low to Ultra settings suggests that the bottleneck transitions from pure fill-rate at Low to a combination of shader complexity and memory bandwidth at Ultra. The GPU's 48 ROPs and 120 TMUs are adequate for 1080p and 1440p Medium settings, but the data shows a 33% frame rate drop when moving from 1440p Medium (61 FPS) to 4K Medium (48 FPS), which tracks closely with the 2.25x increase in pixel count, indicating that the GPU is operating near its pixel throughput limits at 4K.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT is a Zen 3 (Vermeer) architecture processor with 8 cores and 16 threads, running at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.80 GHz. The CPU has a 32 MB shared L3 cache and supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. In The Medium, the CPU's role is primarily to feed the GPU with draw calls and manage the game's streaming of two simultaneous world states. The benchmark data reveals that the CPU is not the primary bottleneck at lower resolutions, as the frame rate scales consistently with GPU load.

The 5800XT achieves a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 23794 and a single-core score of 3359, placing it in the 81st percentile of all CPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, scores 29713 (0.6% higher), while the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H scores 29868 (0% difference), indicating that the 5800XT is well-matched to its competition in synthetic tests. For gaming, the 3DMark 16-thread score of 7683 and single-thread score of 959 suggest that the CPU has sufficient single-thread performance to handle The Medium's game logic and sufficient multi-threading to manage background tasks.

The data shows that at 1080p, the frame rate difference between Low (116 FPS) and Medium (72 FPS) is 38%, while the difference between Medium and High (52 FPS) is another 28%. This scaling pattern indicates that the CPU can easily maintain frame delivery at the lower settings, but the GPU becomes the limiting factor as settings increase. The CPU's 8 cores and 16 threads are more than adequate for a game released in 2021, as the measured results show no signs of CPU-induced stuttering at Medium settings (minimum FPS of 61 at 1080p). The Passmark multithread score of 28053 and single-thread score of 3535 further confirm that the 5800XT provides a solid foundation for this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and settings combination for a smooth experience?

A: The data shows that 1920x1080 with Medium settings provides the best balance, achieving an average of 72 FPS with a minimum of 61 FPS. This is the only configuration that maintains a minimum frame rate above 60 FPS.

Q: Is the RTX 5060 capable of running The Medium at 4K?

A: Yes, but only at Medium settings, where it achieves an average of 48 FPS. The High preset drops to 34 FPS and Ultra drops to 27 FPS, both of which are below ideal playability thresholds.

Q: How does the Ryzen 7 5800XT compare to its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The 5800XT scores 29879 on average, which is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 7 7840H (29868) and 0.3% behind the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (29955). It is 0.6% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (29713).

Q: Does the GPU's 8 GB VRAM limit performance in The Medium?

A: The data suggests yes. The frame rate drops from 61 FPS at 1440p Medium to 48 FPS at 4K Medium, a 21% decrease for a 2.25x pixel increase. The drop to 27 FPS at 4K Ultra indicates the VRAM is insufficient for the highest settings at high resolutions.

Q: What is the frame rate difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: The data shows that Low settings achieve 116 FPS, while Ultra settings achieve 41 FPS. This represents a 64% performance reduction from Low to Ultra at 1080p.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this configuration?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the primary bottleneck at higher settings. The CPU's performance is sufficient to deliver 116 FPS at 1080p Low, but the GPU cannot maintain that frame rate as settings increase, dropping to 41 FPS at Ultra.

Resolution Scaling

The measured frame rates reveal a consistent pattern of performance degradation as resolution increases, but the magnitude of the drop varies significantly by settings preset. At Medium settings, the frame rate drops from 72 FPS at 1080p to 61 FPS at 1440p (a 15% decrease) and then to 48 FPS at 4K (a 21% decrease from 1440p). This gradual scaling indicates that the RTX 5060 is not entirely overwhelmed by the resolution increase at Medium settings, but the 4K step begins to strain the GPU's memory bandwidth.

At Low settings, the scaling is more linear: 116 FPS at 1080p drops to 97 FPS at 1440p (16% decrease) and then to 76 FPS at 4K (22% decrease from 1440p). This suggests that at Low settings, the GPU is operating within its comfortable performance envelope, and the resolution scaling follows a predictable fill-rate curve. The High preset shows a different pattern: 52 FPS at 1080p, 44 FPS at 1440p (15% decrease), and 34 FPS at 4K (23% decrease from 1440p). The Ultra preset exhibits the most severe scaling: 41 FPS at 1080p, 35 FPS at 1440p (15% decrease), and 27 FPS at 4K (23% decrease from 1440p).

The consistent 15% drop from 1080p to 1440p across all settings indicates that the GPU's pixel throughput is the limiting factor, as the pixel count increases by 78% (from 2.07 million to 3.68 million pixels). The slightly larger 21-23% drop from 1440p to 4K (which increases pixel count by 125%) suggests that the GPU begins to hit memory bandwidth limitations at 4K, particularly at higher settings. The data shows that the RTX 5060's 448.0 GB/s bandwidth is adequate for 1080p and 1440p Medium settings but becomes a constraint at 4K, where the frame rate drops to 48 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: Average 116 FPS. This is the highest frame rate recorded for any setting at any resolution, indicating the GPU has ample headroom at this setting.
• Medium: Average 72 FPS, with a minimum of 61 FPS and maximum of 83 FPS. This is the recommended setting, providing a 61 FPS minimum that ensures smooth gameplay.
• High: Average 52 FPS. This represents a 28% drop from Medium, making it borderline for users who prioritize frame rate stability.
• Ultra: Average 41 FPS. This is a 20% drop from High and a 43% drop from Medium, indicating that Ultra settings are too demanding for this GPU at 1080p.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: Average 97 FPS. This is 16% lower than the 1080p Low result, showing a predictable performance scaling.
• Medium: Average 61 FPS, with a minimum of 52 FPS and maximum of 70 FPS. The minimum frame rate is still above 50 FPS, making this a viable option for 1440p gaming.
• High: Average 44 FPS. This is a 28% drop from Medium, consistent with the 1080p scaling pattern.
• Ultra: Average 35 FPS. This is below the 60 FPS threshold and approaching the 30 FPS minimum for playability.

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: Average 76 FPS. This is the only setting at 4K that achieves a frame rate above 60 FPS, showing that the GPU can handle 4K at reduced visual quality.
• Medium: Average 48 FPS, with a minimum of 41 FPS and maximum of 55 FPS. This is the highest quality setting that remains playable at 4K.
• High: Average 34 FPS. This is below the 40 FPS threshold and may cause noticeable stuttering in a horror game that relies on atmosphere.
• Ultra: Average 27 FPS. This is the lowest recorded frame rate and is not recommended for a playable experience.