The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 achieves a combo rank of 48 out of 1,689 tested combinations in The Medium. This places the configuration in the top 2.8% of all tested hardware pairings, indicating that the system is positioned at the upper echelon of performance for this title. The ranking reflects the synergy between the CPU's strong multithreaded capability and the GPU's substantial rendering throughput, though the absolute position also accounts for the fact that the game's rendering engine can stress even flagship hardware at maximum settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 48 out of 1,689 combos represents a near-top-tier result, but it does not sit at the absolute pinnacle. The data shows that a small number of other pairings outperform this configuration in The Medium, likely due to variations in how the game engine utilizes both the processor and graphics card. The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D holds an 87th percentile ranking among all CPUs, while the RTX 4090 sits at the 91st percentile among all GPUs, confirming that both components are individually high-performing. The combination of an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor with a massive 96 MB shared L3 cache and the RTX 4090's 24 GB of GDDR6X memory provides a robust foundation for the game's demanding split-screen rendering technique.

Benchmark scores for the CPU reinforce its capability: a Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29,149 and a single-core score of 4,115 demonstrate balanced performance that avoids bottlenecking the GPU in most scenarios. The nearest CPU rivals, such as the Intel Core i7-12700F with an average score of 31,543 and a delta of just 0.1%, show that the 7800X3D is competitive but not overwhelmingly dominant in synthetic tests. For the GPU, the Passmark G3D score of 38,194 and Geekbench OpenCL score of 317,684 highlight the RTX 4090's raw compute power, with the nearest rival being the NVIDIA Tesla T4 at a delta of -0.4%, indicating near-parity in this specific benchmark metric. The rank of 48 suggests that while the hardware is exceptional, the game's optimization profile rewards certain other configurations slightly more in real-world FPS.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 plays a pivotal role in determining frame rates in The Medium, given the game's 2021 release date and its reliance on heavy visual effects. The GPU operates with a base clock of 2235 MHz and a boost clock of 2520 MHz, with memory running at an effective 21 Gbps across a 384-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 1.01 TB/s. This substantial memory bandwidth is critical for the game's dual-world rendering, where two perspectives are often displayed simultaneously, requiring rapid data streaming. The 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM is more than sufficient for the game's highest texture and geometry demands at 3840x2160, as the measured FPS at that resolution with Ultra settings drops to 48.8 FPS, indicating that the GPU's shading units are the primary constraint rather than memory capacity.

The GPU's 16,384 shading units and 176 ROPs deliver an FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS, which directly influences the pixel fill rate of 443.5 GPixel/s. In The Medium, the transition from Low to Ultra settings at 1080p shows a significant FPS drop from 155.1 to 78.0, a reduction of 49.7%, which correlates with the increased shading complexity and shadow rendering. The RTX 4090's ray tracing cores and tensor cores, though present (128 and 512 respectively), are less impactful in this title since the benchmark data shows no specific ray tracing test results. The GPU's Passmark G3D score of 38,194 places it in the 91st percentile, and its average benchmark score of 66,473 is within 0.9% of the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56, though the RTX 4090's modern architecture provides better real-world scaling in this game.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average FPS measured for this combo in The Medium?

A: The highest average FPS is 155.1, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with Low settings.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the average FPS is 48.8, which is the lowest measured result across all configurations in the data set.

Q: What is the CPU's percentile ranking among all tested processors?

A: The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D ranks in the 87th percentile of all CPUs based on its benchmark scores.

Q: Does the GPU have enough VRAM for maximum settings?

A: Yes, the RTX 4090 includes 24 GB of GDDR6X memory, which is more than adequate for the game's most demanding texture loads.

Q: What is the GPU's boost clock speed?

A: The boost clock is 2520 MHz, with a base clock of 2235 MHz.

Q: What is the measured FPS difference between 1080p Low and 1440p High?

A: The FPS drops from 155.1 at 1080p Low to 79.4 at 1440p High, a reduction of 75.7 FPS.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a clear picture of performance scaling across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1920x1080, the combo delivers an average of 94.2 FPS on High settings, 132.4 FPS on Medium, 155.1 FPS on Low, and 78.0 FPS on Ultra. The Ultra setting at 1080p is particularly demanding, showing a 49.7% reduction in FPS compared to Low, which indicates that the game's ultra preset introduces heavy post-processing and volumetric effects that strain the GPU's compute units.

At 2560x1440, the average FPS values are 79.4 for High, 109.4 for Medium, 147.3 for Low, and 62.9 for Ultra. The drop from 1080p High to 1440p High is 14.8 FPS, from 94.2 to 79.4, representing a 15.7% decrease that aligns with the increased pixel count of 77% more pixels. The Ultra preset at 1440p yields 62.9 FPS, which is a 19.4% drop from the 1440p High result, showing that the Ultra settings impose a consistent penalty irrespective of resolution.

At 3840x2160, the results are 62.8 FPS for High, 86.7 FPS for Medium, 134.5 FPS for Low, and 48.8 FPS for Ultra. The 4K High result of 62.8 FPS is just above the 60 FPS threshold, while 4K Ultra at 48.8 FPS is below playable smoothness for many users. The scaling from 1080p to 4K at High settings shows a reduction from 94.2 to 62.8 FPS, a 33.3% decrease, which is less than the theoretical pixel count increase of 400%, indicating that the GPU has sufficient headroom but that the game's engine becomes less efficient at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The resolution scaling from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 reveals the limiting component in this configuration. At Low settings, the FPS drops from 155.1 at 1080p to 134.5 at 4K, a reduction of 13.3%. This modest decrease suggests that at Low settings, the CPU is the primary bottleneck, as the GPU has ample capacity to handle the increased pixel load without significant frame rate loss. The 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D, with its 96 MB L3 cache, maintains high frame pacing even as resolution scales, allowing the GPU to remain underutilized.

At Ultra settings, the scaling is more pronounced: FPS drops from 78.0 at 1080p to 48.8 at 4K, a reduction of 37.4%. This larger percentage drop indicates that at Ultra settings, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, as the increased shading and texture work overwhelms the RTX 4090's 16,384 shading units. The transition from Medium to High settings at each resolution also shows consistent patterns: at 1080p, the drop from Medium to High is 38.2 FPS (132.4 to 94.2), while at 1440p it is 30.0 FPS (109.4 to 79.4), and at 4K it is 23.9 FPS (86.7 to 62.8). This diminishing absolute difference with increasing resolution confirms that the GPU's workload grows non-linearly with settings and resolution.

The data shows that at 4K Ultra, the system delivers only 48.8 FPS, which is a 68.5% reduction from the 1080p Low result of 155.1 FPS. This indicates that for maximum visual fidelity at 4K, the combo is borderline, but at High settings and below, it maintains playable frame rates across all resolutions. The CPU's strong single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 4,115) ensures that it does not throttle the GPU at lower resolutions, as evidenced by the high FPS at 1080p Low. Overall, the limiting component shifts from the CPU at low settings to the GPU at high settings, with the RTX 4090's 82.58 TFLOPS being the decisive factor for 4K Ultra performance.