The Medium

The Medium presents a unique rendering challenge, and the data for the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 reveals a configuration that is heavily skewed toward GPU-bound performance. The measured frames per second across the three primary resolutions show a predictable scaling pattern, but the magnitude of the drops between settings indicates where the bottleneck truly lies.

Resolution Scaling

The transition from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 produces a significant performance shift that clearly identifies the graphics card as the limiting factor. At the High preset, the average frame rate falls from 86 FPS at 1080p to 72 FPS at 1440p, and finally to 57 FPS at 4K. This represents a 33.7% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest tested resolution to the highest. The pattern is even more pronounced at the Low preset, where the system delivers 191 FPS at 1080p but drops to 127 FPS at 4K—a 33.5% decline that mirrors the High preset's scaling almost exactly.

The Medium preset shows the most linear progression across the resolution ladder, with average frame rates of 120 FPS at 1080p, 101 FPS at 1440p, and 79 FPS at 4K. The frame time consistency also degrades with resolution; the Medium preset at 1080p shows a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS, while the same preset at 4K tightens to a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 91 FPS. This narrowing of the frame rate range at higher resolutions suggests the GPU is working closer to its sustained limit, with less headroom for variance.

The Ultra preset tells a similar story, dropping from 68 FPS at 1080p to 57 FPS at 1440p and 45 FPS at 4K. The fact that the 4K Ultra result dips below the 60 FPS threshold indicates that this combination cannot fully saturate a 4K display at maximum quality settings. The scaling behavior across all four presets—where the percentage drop from 1080p to 4K remains relatively consistent around 33-34%—points to a purely GPU-limited scenario. The CPU's role in this equation is negligible at these resolutions, as the frame rate deltas are driven almost entirely by pixel throughput and shading complexity.

How This Combo Ranks

Within the database of tested combinations, this specific pairing of the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 achieves a rank of 173 out of 3724 total combos for The Medium. This places the configuration in the top 4.6% of all tested systems, which is a strong showing for a game that launched in early 2021. The percentile placement is notable because The Medium is not a particularly demanding title by modern standards, yet this hardware still lands comfortably among the upper echelon of results.

The ranking suggests that while the RTX 4080 is the dominant contributor to the final scores, the Ryzen 7 9700X does not hold the system back. A lower-performing CPU paired with the same GPU would likely see similar frame rates at 4K, but the 1080p results—where the CPU has more influence—would suffer. The 191 FPS average at the Low preset with 1080p resolution demonstrates that the processor can feed the GPU sufficiently to avoid leaving performance on the table. This rank is achieved without relying on any upscaling technologies, as the measured data reflects native rendering only.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the clear workhorse in this configuration, and its specifications explain the measured results. The card features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering a memory bandwidth of 716.8 GB/s. This substantial bandwidth is critical for The Medium, which uses a dual-reality rendering technique that requires the GPU to process two simultaneous camera views. The memory capacity of 16 GB is more than sufficient for this title, even at 4K resolution with High or Ultra settings, as the game's texture streaming requirements are unlikely to exceed this amount.

The GPU's clock behavior shows a base clock of 2205 MHz with a boost clock of 2505 MHz, and the 48.74 TFLOPS of FP32 compute provides ample raw throughput for the game's shader work. The 76 ray tracing cores and 304 tensor cores are present but not heavily utilized in this title, as The Medium primarily relies on traditional rasterization with fixed camera angles. The card's Ada Lovelace architecture includes 9728 shading units and 304 texture mapping units, which handle the game's visual effects efficiently.

The RTX 4080's percentile ranking of 86 against all GPUs in the database reflects its position just below the top tier. The nearest rival data shows the RTX 4080 SUPER with an average score of 54209, a 0.1% delta from the 4080's 54247, indicating that the two cards are effectively performance peers in synthetic benchmarks. The AMD Radeon Pro W5700X sits 1.1% higher, while the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB and AMD Radeon 8060S trail by 2.6% and 2.7% respectively. These benchmark scores do not directly translate to The Medium's frame rates, but they establish the RTX 4080's position in the broader performance hierarchy.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the data shows a full range of performance across the four settings presets. The Low preset delivers an average of 191 FPS, which represents the ceiling for this combination at that resolution. The Medium preset averages 120 FPS with a minimum of 102 FPS and a maximum of 138 FPS, providing a smooth experience that stays well above display refresh rate thresholds. The High preset averages 86 FPS, while the Ultra preset drops to 68 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra at 1080p is 123 FPS, demonstrating that the settings menu has a dramatic impact on performance at this resolution.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset still achieves a high average of 161 FPS, which is a 15.7% reduction compared to the same settings at 1080p. The Medium preset averages 101 FPS with a minimum of 86 FPS and a maximum of 116 FPS, maintaining playability for high-refresh-rate monitors. The High preset falls to 72 FPS, and the Ultra preset settles at 57 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p narrows to 104 FPS, indicating that the GPU is becoming more constrained as pixel count increases.

At 3840x2160, the performance curve compresses further. The Low preset averages 127 FPS, which is still a playable result for competitive or fast-paced scenes. The Medium preset averages 79 FPS with a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 91 FPS, providing a stable experience that approaches the 60 FPS floor. The High preset drops to 57 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 45 FPS. The total spread at 4K is 82 FPS, reflecting the GPU's diminishing ability to differentiate between settings as it approaches its rendering limits.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data points to the Medium preset as the optimal configuration for this hardware combination, particularly for users targeting a balance between visual quality and frame rate stability. At 4K, the Medium preset delivers 79 FPS average with a minimum of 67 FPS, which keeps the experience above the 60 FPS threshold that most players consider the floor for smooth gameplay. The High preset at 4K drops to 57 FPS, which introduces the risk of perceptible stutter during scenes with heavy particle effects or dual-reality transitions.

At 1440p, the Medium preset's 101 FPS average with an 86 FPS minimum makes it the clear choice for users with 144 Hz displays, as it maintains frame rates high enough to take advantage of the refresh rate without sacrificing too much visual fidelity. The High preset at 72 FPS is also viable for users who prioritize image quality over raw frame rate, but the Medium preset offers a more comfortable margin above the 60 FPS baseline.

For 1080p users, the Low preset's 191 FPS average is excessive unless the user has a 240 Hz or higher refresh rate monitor. The Medium preset at 120 FPS with a 102 FPS minimum is the recommendation for most 1080p setups, as it provides a substantial improvement in visual quality over Low while still delivering frame rates that exceed the capabilities of standard 60 Hz and 144 Hz displays. The Ultra preset at 1080p averages 68 FPS, which is playable but does not offer a significant visual advantage over High or Medium in this title's fixed-camera presentation.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X contributes to the overall performance picture through its 8 cores and 16 threads, which operate at a base clock of 3.80 GHz and boost up to 5.50 GHz. This Zen 5 architecture processor, built on a 4 nm process by TSMC, provides strong single-threaded performance that is essential for The Medium's game logic and scripting. The processor's 32 MB of shared L3 cache helps reduce memory latency for the game's streaming assets, though the impact is less pronounced at higher resolutions where the GPU dominates.

The CPU's benchmark results show a 3DMark single-thread score of 1280 and a max-thread score of 9771, which places it in the 86th percentile against all CPUs. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 20485 and single-core score of 2211 demonstrate the processor's capability to handle both lightly-threaded and heavily-threaded workloads. The Geekbench multicore score of 17906 and single-core score of 3023 further confirm this balance. In The Medium specifically, the CPU's role is most evident at 1080p with Low settings, where the 191 FPS average indicates the processor can keep up with the GPU's output. The 3DMark 2-thread score of 2525 and 4-thread score of 4869 suggest that the processor has ample headroom for the game's main thread, which rarely scales beyond a few cores.

The nearest rival data shows the Intel Core i9-14901E with an average score of 37911, which is only 0.1% different from the Ryzen 7 9700X's 37943. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 also sits at 0.1% delta with a score of 37904, while the Intel Core 5 211E and AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P132 trail by 0.3% and 0.4% respectively. These close margins indicate that the Ryzen 7 9700X is not a performance outlier in either direction, but rather a well-rounded processor that pairs effectively with high-end GPUs like the RTX 4080 without introducing a bottleneck.