The Medium

# The Medium with AMD Ryzen 7 9700F + AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F paired with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT delivers a playable but demanding experience in The Medium, a horror title from 2021 that clearly stresses the GPU harder as resolution climbs. The data shows a combo that handles 1080p and 1440p comfortably at most settings, but 4K Ultra pushes the system to its limits, with average frame rates dipping below 40 FPS. This pairing ranks in the 78th percentile among tested combos for this game, indicating solid but not top-tier performance relative to the full database of configurations.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data reveals a steep performance drop as resolution increases, confirming that the Radeon RX 9070 XT is the primary bottleneck in this configuration for The Medium. At Medium settings, the average frame rate falls from 93 FPS at 1920x1080 to 79 FPS at 2560x1440, then to 62 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a 15% reduction from 1080p to 1440p, followed by a 22% reduction from 1440p to 4K, showing that the GPU's rendering load scales almost linearly with pixel count.

The pattern holds across other settings. At High settings, average FPS drops from 67 at 1080p to 56 at 1440p (a 16% decrease) and then to 44 at 4K (a 21% decrease). Low settings show the most dramatic absolute numbers, with 149 FPS at 1080p, 126 FPS at 1440p, and 99 FPS at 4K. The fact that even Low settings at 4K can only muster 99 FPS—while 1080p Low reaches 149 FPS—indicates that pixel throughput, not CPU logic, is the limiting factor here.

Ultra settings paint the clearest picture of GPU saturation. At 1080p Ultra, the average is 53 FPS; at 1440p Ultra, it drops to 45 FPS; at 4K Ultra, it collapses to 35 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 64 FPS (99 vs 35), which is a massive spread that highlights how much headroom the RX 9070 XT has at lower settings versus how quickly it runs out of steam at maximum quality. The 4K Medium data includes a minimum FPS of 53 and a maximum of 71, suggesting frame pacing is reasonably stable, but the average of 62 FPS is borderline for a smooth experience on a high-refresh 4K display.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the benchmark database, this specific CPU-GPU combination achieves a rank of 631 out of 2911 tested combos for The Medium. That places it in the top 22% of all configurations, which is respectable given the game's age and the hardware's relatively recent release dates. The combo sits well above the median, but it is not near the top of the leaderboard, indicating that there are many more powerful pairings—likely with higher-end GPUs or CPUs—that push higher frame rates.

The rank of 631 out of 2911 means that roughly 78% of tested combos perform worse, while 22% perform better. This is consistent with the measured FPS data showing strong 1080p and 1440p performance but weaker 4K Ultra results. For a horror game like The Medium, where atmosphere and pacing matter more than raw competitive frame rates, this level of performance is entirely serviceable at 1440p and below. The combo's percentile ranking suggests it is a balanced pairing—the Ryzen 7 9700F is a high-end CPU (94th percentile among all CPUs in general benchmarks), and the RX 9070 XT is a mid-to-high-end GPU (55th percentile among all GPUs), so the combination lands in the upper-middle tier of the overall distribution.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is the workhorse in this pairing, and its specifications directly explain the observed frame rates. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth. This is ample for The Medium, which is a 2021 title unlikely to exceed 8 GB of VRAM usage even at 4K Ultra, so memory capacity is not a limiting factor in these results. The GPU's clock behavior—with a base clock of 1660 MHz, a game clock of 2400 MHz, and a boost clock of 2970 MHz—shows that the card can scale its frequency aggressively under load, which helps at lower resolutions where the GPU is not fully saturated.

The RX 9070 XT's compute resources include 4096 shading units, 256 texture mapping units, and 128 render output units, along with 64 ray tracing cores. In The Medium, which does not heavily utilize ray tracing in its default settings, the raw rasterization throughput matters most. The measured 48.66 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is substantial, and the data shows this translates to 149 FPS at 1080p Low, indicating the GPU is far from being the bottleneck at lower resolutions. However, the 4K Ultra result of 35 FPS suggests that the GPU's fill rate and shader throughput are fully taxed when rendering 8.3 million pixels per frame with maximum quality effects.

The GPU's general benchmark scores are modest relative to its gaming performance—its PassMark G3D score is 26795, and its average benchmark score is 13543, placing it in the 55th percentile among all GPUs. Interestingly, its nearest rivals in general benchmarks are much older cards like the AMD Radeon HD 7770M and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570, which have similar average scores (13536 and 13515, respectively) but are nowhere near the RX 9070 XT's gaming capabilities. This discrepancy highlights that synthetic benchmarks do not always reflect real-world gaming performance, and in The Medium, the RX 9070 XT delivers solid numbers that far exceed what those older rivals could achieve.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for this combo in The Medium?*

A: Based on the measured data, 2560x1440 at High settings is the sweet spot, delivering 56 FPS average. If you prefer higher frame rates, 1920x1080 at High gives 67 FPS, while 1440p Medium reaches 79 FPS. 4K is playable only at Low settings (99 FPS) or Medium settings (62 FPS), but Ultra at 4K drops to 35 FPS, which is below smooth gameplay thresholds.

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

A: The average frame rate at 3840x2160 Ultra is 35 FPS, with no minimum or maximum recorded. This is below the 60 FPS target most gamers prefer, so you would need to lower settings to Medium (62 FPS) or Low (99 FPS) for a smoother experience at 4K.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for frame rate limits in this game?

A: The data strongly indicates the GPU is the limiting factor. Resolution scaling shows a consistent FPS drop as pixel count increases, which is characteristic of GPU-bound scenarios. The Ryzen 7 9700F's 8 cores and 16 threads with a 5.50 GHz boost clock are more than sufficient for The Medium's demands, and the CPU's PassMark single-thread score of 4691 places it well above what this horror title requires.

Q: What are the exact FPS numbers at Medium settings across resolutions?

A: At Medium settings, the combo achieves 93 FPS at 1920x1080 (with a minimum of 79 and maximum of 107), 79 FPS at 2560x1440 (minimum 67, maximum 90), and 62 FPS at 3840x2160 (minimum 53, maximum 71). The frame time consistency is decent, with the minimums staying within 15% of the averages.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: It ranks 631st out of 2911 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the top 22% of all configurations. This is a solid result, showing that the pairing outperforms the majority of systems in the database, though it is not in the top tier.

Q: Does the GPU's VRAM capacity affect performance in this game?

A: The RX 9070 XT has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, which is far more than The Medium needs given its 2021 release date. The measured FPS numbers do not show any signs of VRAM-related stuttering or performance cliffs, so memory capacity is not a concern at any resolution or settings level tested.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete measured FPS dataset for this combo in The Medium is as follows:

At 1920x1080, the lowest tested resolution, performance is strong across all settings. Low settings produce an average of 149 FPS, which is the highest number recorded for this combo in the game. Medium settings yield 93 FPS with a minimum of 79 and maximum of 107, indicating smooth and consistent frame delivery. High settings drop to 67 FPS, and Ultra settings fall to 53 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 96 FPS, showing that quality settings have a massive impact on performance at this resolution.

At 2560x1440, the middle ground, the numbers shift downward but remain playable. Low settings average 126 FPS, which is still excellent for a 1440p display. Medium settings average 79 FPS (minimum 67, maximum 90), providing a good balance between visual quality and smoothness. High settings drop to 56 FPS, and Ultra settings fall further to 45 FPS. The 1440p results show a 81 FPS spread from Low to Ultra, confirming that the GPU is working harder at this resolution but still has headroom at lower settings.

At 3840x2160, the highest resolution, the GPU's limits become apparent. Low settings average 99 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K and indicates the RX 9070 XT can handle this game at reduced quality. Medium settings average 62 FPS (minimum 53, maximum 71), which is borderline for a smooth experience on a 60 Hz display. High settings drop to 44 FPS, and Ultra settings collapse to 35 FPS, making them unsuitable for comfortable play. The 4K data shows a 64 FPS spread from Low to Ultra, with the Ultra setting being the only one that falls below 40 FPS.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700F is a Zen 5 architecture processor built on a 4 nm process, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads. Its base clock is 3.80 GHz, with a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, and it carries a 65 W TDP. The CPU has 32 MB of shared L3 cache, plus 1 MB L2 and 80 KB L1 per core, which provides ample fast memory for game logic and asset streaming. In The Medium, a game that is primarily GPU-bound as shown by the resolution scaling data, the CPU's role is to feed the GPU with draw calls and handle physics and AI without becoming a bottleneck.

The Ryzen 7 9700F's general benchmark performance is strong, with a PassMark multithread score of 36470 and a single-thread score of 4691. Its average benchmark score of 69996 places it in the 94th percentile among all CPUs, and its nearest rivals include the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX (avg score 69875, delta 0.2%), Intel Core i7-14700KF (avg score 70163, delta -0.2%), AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (avg score 69515, delta 0.7%), and Intel Core i7-14700K (avg score 69355, delta 0.9%). These deltas are all within 1% of each other, meaning the 9700F is effectively tied with several top-tier CPUs from the previous generation in general compute performance.

For The Medium specifically, the CPU's 8 cores and 16 threads are more than sufficient. The game is not known for heavy multithreading, and the measured FPS data shows that the GPU is the limiting factor at every resolution and settings combination. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see similar frame rates across different resolutions at the same settings, but the data shows a consistent drop from 1080p to 1440p to 4K, which is the signature of a GPU-bound workload. The CPU's high single-thread performance ensures that even the most demanding game logic is handled with ease, leaving the RX 9070 XT as the sole determinant of frame rates in this pairing.