The Medium

# The Medium with AMD Ryzen 7 7700 + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination delivers a thoroughly playable experience in The Medium across all tested resolutions, with the data showing a clear progression of performance scaling from 1080p through 4K. Measured average frame rates range from 148.8 FPS at 1080p Low to 34.8 FPS at 4K Ultra, placing this combo at rank 387 out of 1689 tested configurations in this game. The RTX 4070, with its 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, demonstrates strong headroom at lower settings, while the Ryzen 7 7700's 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 architecture proves more than sufficient to keep the GPU fed at every resolution tested.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data reveals a predictable but steep performance drop as resolution increases, with the magnitude of the drop depending heavily on the graphics preset. At Low settings, the average frame rate falls from 148.8 FPS at 1920x1080 to 123.6 FPS at 2560x1440, a 16.9% reduction, and then to 100.2 FPS at 3840x2160, a further 18.9% drop from 1440p. This relatively modest scaling at Low settings indicates the GPU is not yet the sole limiting factor at 1080p, with the CPU still contributing to the performance ceiling.

The scaling behavior changes dramatically at Ultra settings. At 1920x1080 Ultra, the combo produces 56.0 FPS, which falls to 46.4 FPS at 2560x1440 (a 17.1% drop) and then to 34.8 FPS at 3840x2160 (a 25.0% drop from 1440p). The steeper decline at 4K Ultra suggests that the RTX 4070's rendering workload becomes increasingly dominant, with the 5888 shading units and 64 ROPs being pushed to their limits by the game's demanding visual effects at this preset.

High settings show a similar pattern to Ultra, with 66.9 FPS at 1080p, 57.7 FPS at 1440p (a 13.8% drop), and 46.6 FPS at 4K (a 19.2% drop from 1440p). Medium settings sit between these extremes, going from 90.9 FPS at 1080p to 81.6 FPS at 1440p (10.2% drop) and then to 59.8 FPS at 4K (26.7% drop from 1440p). The consistent pattern across presets is that the largest percentage drop occurs between 1440p and 4K, indicating that pixel throughput becomes the dominant constraint at 4K regardless of quality level.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700 provides a substantial computational foundation for this gaming workload, with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 Raphael architecture. Its base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost clock of 5.30 GHz, combined with a 32 MB shared L3 cache, delivers strong single-threaded performance that is critical for game logic and frame pacing. The processor's benchmark results support this, with a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4136 and a multi-core score of 29302, placing it in the 91st percentile among all CPUs.

The game's performance at 1080p Low, where the GPU is least stressed, provides insight into the CPU's capability. The measured 148.8 FPS at this setting is the highest in the entire dataset, and the fact that it scales down to 100.2 FPS at 4K Low suggests the CPU can comfortably maintain high frame rates without becoming a bottleneck. The Ryzen 7 7700's PassMark multithread score of 34470, along with a single-thread score of 4063, indicates robust processing power for handling the game's fixed-timestep logic and any background system tasks.

Comparing to its nearest rivals, the Ryzen 7 7700's average benchmark score of 40468 is essentially tied with the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H (40431, delta 0.1%) and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (40262, delta 0.5%), while slightly trailing the Intel Core i9-13905H (40712, delta -0.6%). This parity in synthetic benchmarks suggests that any of these processors would deliver similar CPU-bound performance in The Medium, reinforcing that the measured frame rates are primarily GPU-limited at most settings. The CPU's 65 W TDP also indicates efficient operation, though the actual power draw during gaming is not captured in the benchmark data.

Settings Recommendations

For players targeting 60 FPS as a minimum threshold, the data shows that the Medium preset at 1440p delivers 81.6 FPS, providing comfortable headroom above the target. At 4K, the Medium preset yields 59.8 FPS, which is just shy of 60 FPS but still smooth for most players, while the High preset at 4K drops to 46.6 FPS, which may be acceptable for slower-paced horror gameplay but falls short of a consistent 60 FPS experience.

The most balanced experience appears to be Medium settings at 2560x1440, where the measured 81.6 FPS offers both visual quality improvements over Low and a 41.4% performance advantage over High at the same resolution. For those prioritizing frame rate above all else, the Low preset at 1080p achieves 148.8 FPS, which is more than double the 4K Medium result, though the visual compromise is significant. The Ultra preset at any resolution delivers the lowest frame rates, with 56.0 FPS at 1080p being the only Ultra configuration that remains playable, suggesting this preset is best reserved for players with adaptive sync displays or those who prioritize image quality over frame rate stability.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for a consistent 60 FPS experience?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 delivers 81.6 FPS, while the same preset at 3840x2160 produces 59.8 FPS. For a guaranteed 60 FPS with some margin, 1440p Medium is the safer choice, though 4K Medium is borderline acceptable.

Q: How much performance is lost moving from 1080p to 4K at the same settings?

A: At Low settings, the average frame rate drops from 148.8 FPS at 1080p to 100.2 FPS at 4K, a 32.7% reduction. At Ultra settings, the drop is from 56.0 FPS to 34.8 FPS, a 37.9% reduction.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data indicates the GPU is the primary constraint at most settings. At 1080p Low, the frame rate reaches 148.8 FPS, suggesting CPU headroom remains. The RTX 4070's performance percentile of 81 among all GPUs, combined with the Ryzen 7 7700's 91st percentile CPU ranking, supports this conclusion.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested configurations?

A: This combination ranks 387th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 23% of all configurations. The GPU's nearest rival by average score is the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (delta -0.6%), indicating similar overall graphics capability.

Q: Is the RTX 4070's 12 GB VRAM sufficient for this game?

A: The measured frame rates at 4K Ultra (34.8 FPS) do not show signs of VRAM-related stuttering in the data, and the 192-bit memory bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth supports smooth operation. The game's release date of 2021-01-27 suggests it was designed within the VRAM constraints of that era.

Q: What frame rate can I expect at 1080p with High settings?

A: The measured average at 1920x1080 High is 66.9 FPS, which is playable but not as smooth as the 90.9 FPS achieved at Medium settings. This represents a 26.4% performance penalty for the visual upgrade from Medium to High.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 serves as the dominant performance driver in this configuration, with its Ada Lovelace architecture and 35,800 million transistors on a 5 nm process. The GPU's 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs work in concert to produce the measured frame rates, while 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores provide hardware support for ray-traced effects and DLSS, though the measured data does not specify whether these features are active. The boost clock of 2475 MHz, up from a base of 1920 MHz, allows the card to dynamically scale performance based on thermal and power headroom within its 200 W TDP.

The GPU's memory subsystem includes 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus, yielding 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth. This configuration proves adequate for The Medium at all tested resolutions, with the 4K Ultra result of 34.8 FPS representing the heaviest memory load in the dataset. The pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s provide theoretical ceilings that align with the observed scaling behavior — as resolution increases, the pixel fill requirements grow, and the measured frame rates decline accordingly.

In terms of relative performance, the RTX 4070's average benchmark score of 37283 places it in the 81st percentile among all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 at 37507 (delta -0.6%). The NVIDIA GeForce MX570 A (38008, delta -1.9%) and RTX 4080 Mobile (38135, delta -2.2%) score slightly higher, while the AMD Radeon RX 5300M (36371, delta 2.5%) trails by a small margin. This positioning suggests the desktop RTX 4070 is competitive with high-end mobile parts and substantially outperforms its synthetic benchmark score would imply in this specific game, given that The Medium's measured results show strong performance at 1080p and 1440p across most presets.