The Medium

The Medium is a horror title that leans heavily on atmosphere, but the data shows that the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER combination provides a wide range of performance depending on how you configure it. The measured results across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K show that this combo is powerful enough to prioritize visual fidelity, but the gap between settings tiers reveals where the system's strengths and bottlenecks lie.

Settings Recommendations

The sweet spot for this hardware is the Medium preset at 1440p. The data shows an average of 102.1 FPS at 2560x1440 with Medium settings, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay while still offering a substantial visual upgrade over Low. Pushing to High at the same resolution drops the average to 75 FPS, which is still playable but leaves less headroom for the fixed-camera scenes and heavy particle effects The Medium is known for. At 4K, the Medium preset delivers an average of 80 FPS, making it the best choice for players who want to use a 4K display without sacrificing responsiveness.

For those with high-refresh-rate 1080p monitors, the High preset at 84.1 FPS is the practical ceiling for a stable experience. The Ultra preset is the outlier here; while it produces the most detailed image, the performance cost is steep across all resolutions. At 4K Ultra, the average FPS drops to 46.3, which is below the 60 FPS target most players expect. The data indicates that Ultra is best reserved for screenshot-taking or for users who prioritize image quality over frame rate and can tolerate sub-60 performance. Low settings are unnecessarily punishing for this hardware, as the GPU and CPU combo is capable of far more, but it does show the upper bounds of the engine's scalability.

GPU Role

The RTX 4080 SUPER is the dominant component in this pairing, and its 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus with 736.3 GB/s of bandwidth is more than sufficient for The Medium's requirements. The card's 80 RT cores and 10240 shading units are the primary drivers of the visual effects that define the game's dual-reality mechanic, where two worlds are rendered simultaneously. The boost clock of 2550 MHz ensures that the GPU can sustain high throughput in scenes with heavy alpha effects and dynamic lighting.

The data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions. When moving from 1080p to 4K at the same settings, the FPS drop is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario. At Medium settings, the frame rate falls from 119.8 at 1080p to 80 at 4K, a reduction that aligns with the increased pixel count. The CPU, an 8-core Zen 4 part with a 5.30 GHz boost clock, has enough single-thread performance to keep up, as evidenced by its passmark single-thread score of 4063. The GPU's 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is what carries the load, and the data confirms that this is not a CPU-limited setup until you reach very low settings at 1080p, where the 172.8 FPS average suggests the engine is hitting its own limits rather than a hardware ceiling.

How This Combo Ranks

Out of 1689 tested combinations, this specific pairing of the Ryzen 7 7700 and RTX 4080 SUPER ranks 75th for The Medium. That places it in the top 4.4% of all combos in the database, which is a strong result for a system built around a mid-range CPU and a high-end GPU. The rank reflects the balance between the components; the CPU's percentile of 91 against all CPUs and the GPU's percentile of 88 against all GPUs show that neither part is dragging the other down significantly.

The GPU's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, has an average benchmark score that is only 0.2% lower, which suggests that the RTX 4080 SUPER has a slim performance lead in synthetic tests. However, in a game like The Medium, which uses DirectX 12 Ultimate features, the NVIDIA card's 320 tensor cores and more modern architecture provide an edge that the raw scores do not fully capture. The CPU's nearest rival, the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H, is just 0.1% ahead in average score, meaning the 7700 is effectively on par with a high-end laptop chip in compute tasks, but the desktop platform's DDR5 memory support and higher sustained clocks are what allow it to feed the GPU effectively in gaming workloads.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers an average of 172.8 FPS on Low, 119.8 FPS on Medium, 84.1 FPS on High, and 68.8 FPS on Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a 53 FPS reduction, while the drop from Medium to High is 35.7 FPS, and from High to Ultra is 15.3 FPS. This diminishing return pattern is typical, but the absolute numbers show that even at Ultra, the system stays above 60 FPS, making 1080p fully playable at any settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the averages are 158.5 FPS on Low, 102.1 FPS on Medium, 75 FPS on High, and 57.9 FPS on Ultra. The Low setting remains exceptionally high, but the Ultra preset finally dips below the 60 FPS mark. The gap between Medium and High is 27.1 FPS, which is a significant visual upgrade for a moderate performance hit. At 3840x2160, the averages are 127.5 FPS on Low, 80 FPS on Medium, 56.7 FPS on High, and 46.3 FPS on Ultra. Here, High falls below 60 FPS, and the difference between Medium and High is 23.3 FPS. The 4K Low result of 127.5 FPS is notable, as it indicates that the engine's performance ceiling is high enough to allow for high refresh rates even at 4K if the visual settings are reduced.

Resolution Scaling

The data shows a clear pattern of frame rate scaling as resolution increases. From 1080p to 1440p at Medium settings, the FPS drops from 119.8 to 102.1, a reduction of 14.8%. From 1440p to 4K at the same settings, it drops from 102.1 to 80, a reduction of 21.6%. At High settings, the drop from 1080p to 1440p is from 84.1 to 75, an 10.8% reduction, and from 1440p to 4K it is from 75 to 56.7, a 24.4% reduction.

This scaling pattern is consistent with a GPU-bound workload. The percentage drop from 1440p to 4K is larger than the drop from 1080p to 1440p, which is expected because the pixel count increase is proportionally larger. The RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of VRAM is not a limiting factor here, as the game's textures fit comfortably within that allocation. The data suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck until you reach the Low settings at 1080p, where the 172.8 FPS average is close to what the engine can produce regardless of hardware. For most players, the limiting component is the GPU's raw rasterization throughput, which is why the FPS scales so predictably with resolution.

FAQ

Q: Can this combo handle The Medium at 4K with High settings?

A: The measured average at 3840x2160 with High settings is 56.7 FPS. This is below the 60 FPS target, so it is playable but not smooth. Dropping to Medium settings raises the average to 80 FPS, which is a better experience for 4K.

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 1440p monitor?

A: The Medium preset at 2560x1440 yields an average of 102.1 FPS, which provides a good balance of visual quality and performance. The High preset drops to 75 FPS, which is still acceptable but leaves less headroom for demanding scenes.

Q: Is 16 GB of VRAM enough for this game?

A: Yes, the RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is more than sufficient. The game runs at 4K Ultra with 46.3 FPS, which indicates that VRAM capacity is not the limiting factor, as the GPU's compute power is the constraint at those settings.

Q: How does this combo compare to similar hardware in the database?

A: This pairing ranks 75th out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. The GPU is 0.2% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT in average benchmark score, and the CPU is 0.1% behind the AMD Ryzen 9 7940H.

Q: Why does the FPS drop so much when going from Medium to High at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160, the average FPS falls from 80 on Medium to 56.7 on High, a 29% reduction. This is because High settings increase the intensity of the rendering effects, such as shadows and lighting, which places a larger load on the GPU's shader units and RT cores.

Q: Is this system CPU-limited or GPU-limited in The Medium?

A: The data indicates it is GPU-limited at most settings. The FPS scales consistently with resolution changes, which is the hallmark of a GPU bottleneck. The CPU only becomes a potential limit at Low settings at 1080p, where the 172.8 FPS average approaches the engine's practical maximum.