The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 delivers a performance profile in The Medium that is heavily dictated by graphical settings rather than resolution, a hallmark of a system where the GPU is the primary bottleneck at high presets. The data reveals a configuration capable of smooth 4K play at Medium settings, yet one that struggles to maintain 60 FPS at Ultra, regardless of resolution.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows that scaling resolution from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 has a surprisingly modest impact on performance at higher settings, while the impact of changing quality presets is dramatic. At High settings, the average frame rate drops from 65.3 FPS at 1080p to 57.4 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 43.3 FPS at 4K. This represents a 33.7% reduction in performance from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the rendering load is scaling with pixel count as expected, but the absolute numbers are low enough to suggest the GPU is already saturated.

The pattern shifts when examining lower settings. The transition from 1080p to 4K at Low settings sees the average FPS move from 147.7 to 127.7 to 99.8, a 32.4% drop that is proportionally similar to the High preset. However, the absolute headroom is much larger. The most telling comparison is between resolution scaling at the same settings versus settings scaling at the same resolution.

At 4K, moving from Low to Medium reduces the frame rate from 99.8 to 62.1 FPS, a 37.8% hit. Moving from Medium to High brings it down to 43.3 FPS, another 30.3% reduction. The jump from High to Ultra is smaller, from 43.3 to 37.3 FPS (a 13.9% decrease), suggesting a diminishing return in performance cost at the top end. The data indicates that the limiting component is the GPU’s rendering throughput for specific effects, not the resolution itself, as the frame rate differences between 1080p and 1440p are far smaller than the differences between Low and Medium presets. This is characteristic of a title where certain post-processing or volumetric effects impose a fixed cost that does not scale with pixel count.

How This Combo Ranks

In the overall database for The Medium, this combination of CPU and GPU holds the 378th position out of 1689 tested combos. This places it in the top 22.4% of all configurations, a solidly above-average result for a pairing of this nature. The rank suggests that while the RTX 4070 is not a top-tier card, the efficiency of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D prevents the system from being held back by processor limitations in this title.

The benchmark data for the GPU shows an average score of 37283, which places it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival in terms of average score is the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, which scores 37507, a delta of -0.6%. This effectively puts the RTX 4070 at performance parity with a much older card in synthetic tests, though the measured gaming data here shows a different story. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 31580 sits in the 87th percentile of all CPUs, with its closest rival being the Intel Core i7-12700F at a delta of 0.1%. The combination of a high-percentile CPU with a slightly lower-percentile GPU results in a system where the GPU is more likely to be the performance limiter, which aligns with the observed FPS scaling behavior.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC. It features 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units. Its boost clock is rated at 2475 MHz. The card has 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s. In terms of raw compute, it delivers 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

The 12 GB VRAM allocation is a critical factor for The Medium, a game known for its dual-world rendering technique. The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the card averages 37.3 FPS, which is below the 43.3 FPS achieved at 4K High. This indicates that the Ultra preset likely introduces memory pressure or more complex shader work that impacts the GPU’s throughput. The 12 GB capacity appears sufficient, as the game does not exhibit catastrophic frame drops, but the performance headroom is limited. The card’s 46 RT cores and 184 tensor cores are available for the game’s lighting and upscaling features, though the benchmark data provided does not isolate these effects. The GPU’s pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s are the physical limits that dictate how fast the card can fill the screen, and the measured FPS numbers at 4K suggest that at High settings, the card is operating close to these limits.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the RTX 4070 delivers an average of 147.7 FPS at Low settings. This drops to 95.5 FPS at Medium and 65.3 FPS at High. Ultra settings reduce the average to 55.6 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 92.1 FPS, showing a massive range in performance based on quality selection.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset averages 127.7 FPS. Medium settings produce 79.5 FPS, while High settings yield 57.4 FPS. Ultra settings bring the average down to 48.0 FPS. The difference between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings is 20 FPS, which is a 13.5% reduction. At Ultra settings, the difference is only 7.6 FPS, a 13.7% reduction, which mirrors the scaling seen at lower presets.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset maintains a playable 99.8 FPS average. Medium settings drop to 62.1 FPS, which is still smooth for most displays. High settings produce 43.3 FPS, and Ultra settings fall to 37.3 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a 62.5 FPS difference. The data indicates that for a consistent 60 FPS experience, the user must select Medium settings at 4K or High settings at 1440p. The 1080p resolution allows for High settings to exceed 60 FPS, but not by a wide margin. The measured results show that the game is playable across all tested resolutions, but the quality preset is the primary determinant of frame rate, with resolution being a secondary factor.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a Zen 4 architecture processor with 8 cores and 16 threads. It has a base clock of 4.20 GHz and a boost clock of 5.00 GHz. The processor features a substantial 96 MB of shared L3 cache, which is its defining characteristic. Its 3DMark multi-threaded score is 7980, and its single-thread score is 959, indicating strong per-core performance. In Cinebench R23, it scores 29149 multi-core and 4115 single-core, placing it in the 87th percentile of all CPUs.

For The Medium, the CPU’s role appears to be secondary to the GPU. The measured FPS at Low settings shows a variation from 147.7 at 1080p down to 99.8 at 4K, which is a 32.4% drop. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the frame rates would remain constant across resolutions, as the CPU workload is resolution-independent. The fact that FPS scales down with resolution, even at Low settings, confirms that the GPU is the bottleneck. However, the CPU’s high single-thread performance ensures that it does not introduce stutter or frame pacing issues. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 1887 suggests that even lightly threaded game logic is handled efficiently.

The CPU’s 120 W TDP is modest for its performance class, and its 5 nm process node contributes to efficient power delivery. The processor’s memory support for DDR5 with a dual-channel bus provides a bandwidth of 83.2 GB/s, which is sufficient to feed the GPU’s 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth. The data shows that the CPU is not a limiting factor in this game, as the FPS differences between resolutions at the same settings are entirely attributable to GPU load. The CPU’s performance headroom is evident in the fact that it sits in the 87th percentile, while the GPU sits in the 81st percentile, indicating that the GPU is the weaker component in this pairing for this specific title.