The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding dual-reality rendering load, and the combination of the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 delivers a wide spectrum of performance depending on the settings chosen. The measured data shows that this combo is capable of high refresh rates at 1080p and solid 60 FPS experiences at 1440p, but 4K gaming requires a significant trade-off in visual fidelity. This analysis breaks down the optimal settings, comparative ranking, component roles, and resolution scaling behavior of this pairing.

Settings Recommendations

The benchmark data indicates that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual quality and performance across all tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset produces an average of 99.4 FPS, which is a substantial improvement over the 70.7 FPS seen at High settings while still maintaining a playable experience. Moving to 2560x1440, the Medium preset delivers 82.8 FPS, which is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay and represents a 41% performance uplift over the High preset's 58.7 FPS. Even at 3840x2160, the Medium preset maintains an average of 68.5 FPS, making it the only preset that achieves a consistently smooth experience at 4K without dropping below 60 FPS.

The Low preset offers the highest frame rates—160.1 FPS at 1080p, 137.2 FPS at 1440p, and 106.9 FPS at 4K—but the visual compromise is significant for a horror game that relies on atmosphere and lighting. The High preset, while providing better visuals, struggles to maintain 60 FPS at 1440p and falls to 50.8 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, producing 59.7 FPS at 1080p, 46.7 FPS at 1440p, and only 38.9 FPS at 4K, making it unsuitable for smooth gameplay at any resolution despite representing the peak visual quality the game offers.

For players prioritizing a consistent 60 FPS experience, the Medium preset is the clear recommendation. It provides a 40% performance headroom over High at 1080p and doubles the frame rate of Ultra at 4K, allowing the RTX 5070 to handle the game's dual-world rendering without stutter. At 1440p, the Medium preset's 82.8 FPS also provides enough overhead to keep frame times stable during the game's frequent scene transitions between the two realities.

How This Combo Ranks

The data places this combination at rank 307 out of 1,689 tested combos in The Medium, which puts it in the top 18% of all configurations tested. This ranking reflects the strong synergy between the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and the RTX 5070 for this particular title. The CPU's 96 MB of shared L3 cache and 8 cores with 16 threads provide ample processing power for the game's logic, while the GPU's 12 GB of GDDR7 memory and Blackwell 2.0 architecture handle the rendering load.

The RTX 5070's percentile ranking of 83 among all GPUs and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D's percentile of 87 among all CPUs indicate that both components are well above average, and their combined performance in this game reflects that strength. The CPU's nearest rivals, including the Intel Core i7-12700F with a deltaPct of 0.1 and the AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX with a deltaPct of 0.3, show that the 7800X3D is competitive with these processors, but the margin is narrow. The GPU's nearest rivals, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 with a deltaPct of 0.6, demonstrate that the RTX 5070 offers performance in a similar class to previous generation high-end cards.

The rank of 307 out of 1,689 suggests that while this combo is strong, there are configurations that achieve higher frame rates in The Medium, likely involving more powerful GPUs or CPUs with higher core counts for this specific workload. However, the data shows that for the majority of tested combinations, this pairing delivers superior performance, making it a capable choice for horror gaming at high settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is the primary driver of frame rate in The Medium, given the game's heavy reliance on GPU compute for rendering two simultaneous perspectives. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus provides a memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s, which is sufficient for the game's texture streaming demands at 1440p and 4K with Medium settings. The 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores contribute to the game's lighting effects, although the measured data suggests that the standard rasterization performance is the main factor in the FPS results.

The GPU's boost clock of 2512 MHz, combined with its 6,144 shading units, delivers a peak FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS. This compute capability is evident in the scaling of frame rates across settings. At 1080p, the RTX 5070 produces 160.1 FPS at Low settings, but this drops to 59.7 FPS at Ultra, indicating that the GPU is stretched by the game's most demanding visual features. The 80 ROPs and 192 TMUs handle pixel and texture processing, and the data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings.

The 250 W TDP and PCIe 5.0 x16 interface ensure that the GPU can draw sufficient power and communicate efficiently with the CPU. The 12 GB VRAM capacity is a key advantage, as The Medium's dual-world rendering can consume significant memory, and the data shows that the GPU maintains playable frame rates even at 4K with Medium settings, indicating that memory capacity is not a bottleneck in this scenario. The GPU's performance in the PassMark G3D benchmark, scoring 29,137, and its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5,077, corroborate its strong gaming performance.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average FPS values show a clear progression from Low to Ultra: 160.1 FPS at Low, 99.4 FPS at Medium, 70.7 FPS at High, and 59.7 FPS at Ultra. The jump from Low to Medium is a 38% decrease in frame rate, while the drop from Medium to High is a 29% decrease, and the drop from High to Ultra is a 16% decrease. This pattern indicates that the game's performance scales non-linearly with settings, with the most significant cost coming from the Low to Medium transition.

At 2560x1440, the same settings produce 137.2 FPS at Low, 82.8 FPS at Medium, 58.7 FPS at High, and 46.7 FPS at Ultra. The relative performance differences are similar to 1080p, with Medium being 40% slower than Low and High being 29% slower than Medium. The Ultra preset at 1440p falls below 50 FPS, which is a noticeable compromise for gameplay smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates drop further: 106.9 FPS at Low, 68.5 FPS at Medium, 50.8 FPS at High, and 38.9 FPS at Ultra. The Medium preset is the only one that stays above 60 FPS, while High and Ultra both fall below the threshold for smooth play. The Low preset at 4K is surprisingly playable at over 100 FPS, suggesting that the game's visual features at Low are not particularly taxing on the GPU, but the experience is likely to lack the atmospheric detail that defines the horror genre.

The data reveals that the RTX 5070 can handle The Medium at 1080p with any preset, as even Ultra exceeds 60 FPS. At 1440p, Medium is the sweet spot, and at 4K, Medium is the only viable option for 60 FPS play. The spread between Low and Ultra at each resolution is substantial, with Ultra being roughly 2.5 to 2.7 times slower than Low across all resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS scaling from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 provides insight into which component is limiting performance. At Medium settings, the frame rates are 99.4 FPS at 1080p, 82.8 FPS at 1440p, and 68.5 FPS at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is a 17% decrease, while the drop from 1440p to 4K is a 17% decrease as well. This consistent scaling suggests that the GPU is the limiting factor, as the pixel count increases by 78% from 1080p to 1440p and by 125% from 1440p to 4K, but the frame rate does not drop proportionally, indicating that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU enough data.

At High settings, the frame rates are 70.7 FPS at 1080p, 58.7 FPS at 1440p, and 50.8 FPS at 4K. The percentage drops are 17% from 1080p to 1440p and 13% from 1440p to 4K. This pattern is similar to Medium, with the GPU handling the increased resolution load. At Ultra settings, the frame rates are 59.7 FPS at 1080p, 46.7 FPS at 1440p, and 38.9 FPS at 4K, with drops of 22% and 17%, respectively.

The data shows that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D's 8 cores and 16 threads are not a bottleneck in this game, as the FPS scales predictably with resolution. The CPU's Cinebench R23 multicore score of 29,149 and single-core score of 4,115 indicate strong processing power that can keep up with the GPU's demands. The fact that the FPS drops are more pronounced at higher settings, particularly from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra, suggests that the GPU's shading units and memory bandwidth are being pushed to their limits. Overall, the resolution scaling confirms that the RTX 5070 is the primary performance driver, and the CPU provides sufficient headroom for the GPU to operate at its full potential.