The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and Intel Arc B580 pairing presents a fascinating case study in The Medium, a game known for its fixed camera angles and heavy reliance on both CPU and GPU. The measured frame rates reveal a system that is consistently playable at lower settings but quickly becomes a slideshow at higher presets, particularly at 4K. The data suggests a complex interaction where the powerful CPU is often left waiting on the GPU, yet the GPU’s own architectural limits become the ultimate bottleneck at maximum fidelity.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and reveals a classic GPU-bound scenario. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces an average of 88 FPS. Moving to 1440p drops that to 74 FPS, a 15.9% reduction. The jump to 4K yields 58 FPS, which is a 21.6% drop from 1440p and a 34.1% drop from 1080p. This scaling is relatively linear, indicating that the Intel Arc B580’s pixel throughput is the primary limiting factor as resolution increases.

However, the story changes dramatically at higher settings. At Ultra, the average frame rate at 1080p is 31 FPS. At 1440p, it falls to 26 FPS, and at 4K, it bottoms out at 21 FPS. The percentage drops between resolutions are smaller (16.1% and 19.2%), but the absolute numbers are already so low that the experience is compromised at every resolution. This suggests that at Ultra, the GPU is not just limited by pixel count but by the sheer complexity of the shaders and effects, making resolution scaling less impactful than the settings themselves.

The Medium’s low preset appears to be the only setting where the B580 can maintain a playable 4K experience, hitting 58 FPS. This implies that the game’s higher presets introduce effects that are disproportionately expensive on this specific GPU architecture. The data indicates that while the B580 has enough raw bandwidth (456.0 GB/s) for 1440p gaming, its 13.67 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 80 ROPs are insufficient for the full visual load at 4K, leading to the severe frame rate collapse seen at High (26 FPS) and Ultra (21 FPS).

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured rows, the optimal experience hinges on a trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate. For a smooth 60 FPS target, the Low preset is the only viable option at 1080p, delivering 88 FPS. At 1440p, Low still provides a very playable 74 FPS. The Medium preset offers a more balanced experience, but the frame rates drop to 55 FPS at 1080p and 47 FPS at 1440p, which may be acceptable for a slower-paced horror title but not ideal for consistent smoothness.

The High and Ultra presets are effectively unplayable at all resolutions in this test. Even at 1080p, High only manages 40 FPS, and Ultra drops to 31 FPS. The data suggests that for this particular combo, the Medium preset at 1440p (47 FPS) provides the best compromise between visual quality and playability, as it offers a significant improvement over Low while maintaining a frame rate that is above 30 FPS and within the range of what is considered playable for a cinematic horror game. The 4K Medium setting at 37 FPS is borderline, but users with variable refresh rate monitors might find it acceptable. The Ultra preset should be avoided entirely, as the 21 FPS at 4K and 26 FPS at 1440p indicate a GPU that is overwhelmed.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D is a beast of a processor, with 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture. Its benchmark scores are impressive, including a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 22807 and a single-core score of 2228. With a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, it sits in the 92nd percentile of all CPUs. However, The Medium does not appear to be a CPU-bound title for this configuration. The FPS scaling with resolution strongly suggests the GPU is the limiting factor in most scenarios.

The CPU’s role becomes more apparent when examining the Low preset. At 1080p Low, the 88 FPS average is likely close to the game’s engine limit or the CPU’s ability to feed the GPU frames. The drop from 1080p Low (88 FPS) to 1440p Low (74 FPS) indicates that even at low graphical settings, the GPU’s rendering load increases enough to reduce frame rates. This suggests the 9850X3D is providing more than enough headroom, and its 96 MB of shared L3 cache is likely helping with the game’s streaming and asset loading, ensuring stable frame times even during the game’s famous dimension-shifting sequences.

The data implies that the CPU is not a bottleneck here. The nearest rivals to the 9850X3D, such as the Intel Core i9-14900 (deltaPct 0.5) and the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 (deltaPct -0.7), show that its average benchmark score is competitive, but in this game, the FPS numbers are dictated by the Arc B580. Users with this CPU can be confident that their processor is not holding back the GPU, and any performance issues are firmly rooted in the graphics card’s capabilities.

FAQ

*Q: Can this combo run The Medium at 4K?*

A: Yes, but only at Low settings, where it averages 58 FPS. At Medium, it drops to 37 FPS, and at High and Ultra, it falls to 26 and 21 FPS respectively, making those presets unplayable at that resolution.

Q: What is the best settings preset for a 60 FPS target?

A: The Low preset is the only one that achieves an average of 60 FPS or higher, doing so at both 1080p (88 FPS) and 1440p (74 FPS). The Medium preset comes closest, with 55 FPS at 1080p.

Q: Is the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D a bottleneck in this game?

A: The data suggests it is not. The FPS drops correlate with resolution and settings increases, which points to the GPU as the limiting component. The CPU’s high benchmark scores, like the 41318 in Passmark multithread, indicate it has ample performance headroom.

Q: How does the Arc B580’s performance in this game compare to its overall ranking?

A: The GPU sits in the 68th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 23021. Its nearest rival is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080, which has a deltaPct of 0.6, meaning they are nearly identical in synthetic benchmarks. However, in The Medium, the B580’s frame rates are modest, suggesting the game is particularly demanding on its architecture.

Q: What is the impact of the game's Ultra preset on performance?

A: The Ultra preset cripples frame rates. At 1080p, it averages 31 FPS, at 1440p it drops to 26 FPS, and at 4K it falls to 21 FPS. The jump from Medium to Ultra is a performance cliff, indicating that the preset enables features that this GPU cannot handle.

Q: Are the frame times stable on the Medium preset?

A: The data provides min and max FPS for Medium. At 1080p, the range is 47 to 64 FPS, at 1440p it is 40 to 54 FPS, and at 4K it is 31 to 42 FPS. These ranges are relatively wide, indicating some frame time variance, but the average is still within a playable range for a horror game.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B580 is a mid-range GPU built on the Xe2-HPG architecture. It features 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. Its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus provides a substantial 456.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GPU’s boost clock is 2670 MHz, and it has 20 RT cores. In synthetic benchmarks, it scores 15748 in Passmark G3D and 92821 in Geekbench OpenCL. Its average benchmark score of 23021 places it in the 68th percentile, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (deltaPct 0.6).

In The Medium, the B580’s performance is characterized by a sharp drop-off at higher presets. The data shows that the Low preset is the only one where the GPU can stretch its legs, hitting 88 FPS at 1080p. The Medium preset at 1080p (55 FPS) suggests the added effects begin to tax the GPU significantly. The High and Ultra presets, however, reveal a clear architectural limitation. The 20 RT cores might be the culprit, as The Medium uses ray tracing for its reflections and lighting. The data implies that these RT cores are not powerful enough to handle the full ray-traced workload at higher settings, causing the frame rate to plummet.

The GPU’s 12 GB of VRAM is not the issue, as the game’s requirements at these settings are unlikely to exceed that capacity. Instead, the bottleneck is the compute power and RT performance. The B580’s 13.67 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is decent, but the 427.2 GTexel/s texture rate and 213.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are not sufficient for the pixel shader and post-processing load at Ultra. This is why the card performs so well at Low (which likely disables RT and heavy effects) but fails at Ultra (which likely enables them). The 4K Ultra result of 21 FPS is a clear indication that the GPU is overwhelmed, not by memory bandwidth, but by raw processing demands.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the frame rates are as follows: Low averages 88 FPS, Medium averages 55 FPS with a range of 47 to 64 FPS, High averages 40 FPS, and Ultra averages 31 FPS. The performance delta between Low and Medium is a massive 37.5%, highlighting the cost of enabling the game’s more complex effects. The gap between High and Ultra is 22.5%, showing that Ultra is a significant step up in visual demand.

At 2560x1440, the pattern continues: Low averages 74 FPS, Medium averages 47 FPS (min 40, max 54), High averages 33 FPS, and Ultra averages 26 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent across settings, roughly a 15-16% reduction. This indicates that the GPU’s fill rate is the primary constraint as resolution increases.

At 3840x2160, the results are brutal: Low averages 58 FPS, Medium averages 37 FPS (min 31, max 42), High averages 26 FPS, and Ultra averages 21 FPS. The 4K resolution effectively halves the performance compared to 1080p at the same settings. The data shows that only the Low preset can maintain a frame rate above 30 FPS at 4K, and even that is borderline. The overall trend is clear: the Arc B580 is a 1080p and light 1440p card for this title, with the Medium preset at 1440p being the highest playable configuration.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D and Intel Arc B580 combination ranks 2191 out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the bottom 25% of all configurations, which is a surprising result given the CPU’s high performance. The ranking suggests that the GPU is severely dragging down the overall experience. The CPU’s percentile rank of 92 indicates it is a top-tier processor, but the GPU’s 68th percentile rank is more modest. The combined rank shows that the pairing is worse than the sum of its parts, primarily due to the GPU’s struggles with this specific game’s high-end settings.

The data implies that while the CPU is more than capable, the Arc B580 is not a good match for The Medium at higher presets. The combo’s low rank is not a reflection of the CPU’s capabilities but rather the GPU’s inability to deliver playable frame rates when the game’s visual complexity increases. This is a stark example of how a powerful CPU cannot compensate for a GPU that is overmatched by a title’s specific demands. For users considering this combo, the measured FPS indicates that sticking to Low or Medium settings is crucial, as the hardware is simply not positioned to handle the game’s maximum fidelity without significant compromises.