The Medium

FAQ

Q: How does the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X position itself against its nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The Ryzen 9 5900X has an average benchmark score of 39453, placing it in the 90th percentile of all CPUs. It is nearly tied with the AMD EPYC 4245P, which scores 39383 (a delta of 0.2%), and sits 0.9% ahead of the Intel Core i7-13700F (39095). However, it trails the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS by 0.7% (39747) and the Intel Core i7-13700 by 1% (39857), showing a tight cluster of performance at this tier.

Q: What is the GPU's standing relative to its nearest competitors?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti holds an average benchmark score of 44900, landing in the 85th percentile of all GPUs. It is 0.6% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile (45152) and 1.5% behind the Intel Arc A730M (45592). Conversely, it leads the AMD Radeon Pro 580 by 1.6% (44195) and the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT by 1.6% (45642 is the rival's score, so the 4070 Ti is actually 1.6% lower — the deltaPct is -1.6). The data indicates a competitive mid-to-high range placement.

Q: Which settings preset yields the highest average FPS at 1080p for The Medium?

A: The Low preset delivers the highest average FPS at 1920x1080, reaching 143.9 frames per second. This is followed by Medium at 108.7 FPS, High at 80.5 FPS, and Ultra at 64.6 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra shows a performance drop of roughly 55%, highlighting the significant cost of maximum graphical fidelity.

Q: How does the frame rate scale when moving from 1080p to 4K at High settings?

A: At High settings, the average FPS drops from 80.5 at 1920x1080 to 64.4 at 2560x1440, and further down to 49.8 at 3840x2160. This represents a 38% decrease in performance from 1080p to 4K, which is a substantial hit but still leaves the game playable at 4K with an average above 45 FPS.

Q: What is the combo's overall rank among tested system configurations for The Medium?

A: This configuration of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti ranks 225th out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium. This places it in the top 13.3% of all tested systems, indicating a strong performance tier despite not being at the absolute top.

Q: Is the CPU more dominant in single-threaded or multi-threaded workloads?

A: The CPU's single-threaded score in 3DMark is 941, while its 16-thread score is 9075 and its max-thread score is 10075. The multi-threaded scaling is substantial, but the single-thread score relative to its 2-thread score (1852) shows a near-linear 1:2 ratio, indicating efficient scaling. In Cinebench R23, the multicore score is 33150 versus a singlecore score of 4680, showing the 12 cores and 24 threads are effectively utilized.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti serves as the primary rendering engine for The Medium, a horror title that relies heavily on GPU processing for its fixed-camera angles and layered scene rendering. The GPU's 12 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 192-bit bus provides 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth, which is crucial for streaming high-resolution textures without stutter. The base clock of 2310 MHz and boost clock of 2610 MHz allow the card to maintain high throughput during sustained loads, while the 7680 shading units handle the game's pixel and vertex processing requirements.

The measured FPS data reveals that this GPU is the limiting factor at higher resolutions and quality settings. At 1080p with Low settings, the GPU achieves 143.9 FPS, suggesting it has headroom to spare. However, at 4K with Ultra settings, the frame rate collapses to 42.1 FPS, indicating that the GPU's raw compute capacity — 40.09 TFLOPS FP32 — is being saturated by the game's most demanding visual features. The RTX 4070 Ti's 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores suggest it has specialized hardware for ray-traced effects, though the data does not specify whether The Medium utilizes these features.

The GPU's 85th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 44900, places it comfortably above median hardware. Its nearest rival, the RTX 5090 Mobile, edges it out by only 0.6%, showing that the desktop 4070 Ti holds its own against newer mobile parts. The drop from High to Ultra settings at any resolution is consistently steep — for instance, at 1440p, High yields 64.4 FPS while Ultra drops to 52.6 FPS, a 18% penalty — which points to specific Ultra-level effects (likely shadows and reflections) that disproportionately tax the GPU.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured average FPS rows, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 offers the most balanced experience for this combo, delivering 108.7 FPS. This is comfortably above the 60 FPS threshold and leaves enough headroom for occasional dips without falling below playability. The High preset at the same resolution produces 80.5 FPS, which is still smooth but represents a 26% performance cost over Medium for what is likely a marginal visual improvement.

For 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out as the sweet spot, achieving 90.8 FPS. This is high enough to take advantage of higher refresh rate monitors while maintaining visual quality. The High preset at 1440p (64.4 FPS) is borderline for 60 Hz displays, but the Ultra preset (52.6 FPS) dips below the preferred threshold for smooth gameplay. At 3840x2160, the Low preset is the only option that breaks 100 FPS (116.8 FPS), but Medium at 72.3 FPS provides the best compromise between fidelity and fluidity for 4K displays.

The data suggests that Medium settings across all resolutions offer the most consistent experience relative to the GPU's capabilities. The gap between Medium and High is consistently around 25-30% in frame rate cost, while the jump from High to Ultra costs another 20-25%. For players prioritizing frame stability in a horror game where pacing matters, Medium at 1440p provides the highest fidelity at a frame rate that never approaches the 60 FPS danger zone.

How This Combo Ranks

This configuration ranks 225th out of 1689 tested combos for The Medium, placing it in the top 13.3% of all systems benchmarked. This is a strong showing that reflects the balanced nature of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti pairing. The rank indicates that while there are 224 faster configurations, the vast majority of tested systems — 86.7% — deliver lower average frame rates in this specific title.

The ranking is particularly notable given that the GPU sits in the 85th percentile and the CPU in the 90th percentile of their respective categories. The slight disparity between the CPU's higher percentile and the combo's overall rank suggests that The Medium is primarily GPU-limited, as a top-10% CPU cannot fully compensate for a GPU that is merely top-15%. The 1689 total combos include configurations with more powerful GPUs but weaker CPUs, and those rank higher, implying that the GPU choice matters more than the CPU for this game's performance.

The rank of 225 also suggests that this combo is not hitting any unusual bottlenecks or compatibility issues. The measured data confirms that the system scales predictably across resolutions and settings, without any anomalous frame rate collapses that would indicate a driver or hardware conflict. For a horror game that emphasizes atmosphere over competitive frame rates, this ranking ensures a smooth experience without demanding top-tier hardware.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals a consistent pattern of performance degradation that is characteristic of GPU-bound workloads. At Low settings, the frame rate drops from 143.9 FPS at 1080p to 139.7 FPS at 1440p (a mere 3% decrease) and then to 116.8 FPS at 4K (a 19% decrease from 1080p). This relatively mild scaling at Low settings indicates that the CPU is capable of feeding the GPU adequately at lower resolutions, and the GPU has enough bandwidth to handle the increased pixel count without dramatic losses.

At Medium settings, the scaling becomes more pronounced: 108.7 FPS at 1080p drops to 90.8 FPS at 1440p (a 16% reduction) and then to 72.3 FPS at 4K (a 33% reduction from 1080p). This steeper decline suggests that the increased texture detail and shader complexity at Medium settings begin to tax the GPU's 504.2 GB/s memory bandwidth more heavily. The High settings show an even more aggressive scaling pattern: 80.5 FPS at 1080p falls to 64.4 FPS at 1440p (20% drop) and 49.8 FPS at 4K (38% drop).

The Ultra preset exhibits the most severe scaling, with 64.6 FPS at 1080p dropping to 52.6 FPS at 1440p (19% drop) and 42.1 FPS at 4K (35% drop). The fact that even at 1080p Ultra cannot maintain 65 FPS indicates that the GPU is the limiting component, as a more powerful GPU would show a larger delta between 1080p and 4K. The consistent 35-38% drop from 1080p to 4K across Medium, High, and Ultra settings points to a memory bandwidth bottleneck, as the 192-bit bus width struggles to feed the 7680 shading units at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured average frame rates span a wide range: Low delivers 143.9 FPS, Medium achieves 108.7 FPS, High produces 80.5 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 64.6 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra is 79.3 FPS, showing that quality settings have a massive impact on performance at this resolution. The progression from Low to Medium costs 35.2 FPS (24.5% reduction), while Medium to High costs 28.2 FPS (25.9% reduction), and High to Ultra costs 15.9 FPS (19.8% reduction).

At 2560x1440, the frame rates shift downward across all presets: Low reaches 139.7 FPS, Medium hits 90.8 FPS, High delivers 64.4 FPS, and Ultra falls to 52.6 FPS. The delta between Low and Ultra is 87.1 FPS, which is a larger absolute gap than at 1080p. The relative penalties are steeper: Medium to High drops by 26.4 FPS (29.1% reduction), and High to Ultra drops by 11.8 FPS (18.3% reduction).

At 3840x2160, the performance envelope tightens considerably: Low produces 116.8 FPS, Medium achieves 72.3 FPS, High delivers 49.8 FPS, and Ultra struggles to 42.1 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 74.7 FPS. At this resolution, only the Low preset exceeds 100 FPS, and both High and Ultra fall below 50 FPS, making them marginal for smooth gameplay on standard 60 Hz displays. The Medium preset at 72.3 FPS is the only 4K option that comfortably exceeds 60 FPS while retaining some visual quality.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X provides the computational foundation for this combo, with 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 3 architecture. Its base clock of 3.70 GHz and boost clock of 4.80 GHz allow it to handle both lightly-threaded game logic and heavily-threaded background tasks. The 64 MB of L3 cache is particularly relevant for gaming, as it reduces memory latency for frequently accessed data. The CPU's 105 W TDP is modest for a 12-core part, indicating efficient power delivery.

In synthetic benchmarks, the CPU demonstrates strong multi-threaded capabilities: Cinebench R23 multicore scores 33150, while singlecore scores 4680. The 3DMark 16-thread test yields 9075, and the max-thread test reaches 10075. These scores suggest that the CPU is unlikely to bottleneck the RTX 4070 Ti in The Medium, as the game's fixed-camera design likely does not require extreme single-thread performance. The 90th percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms that this processor is well above average for gaming workloads.

The CPU's role in The Medium appears to be secondary to the GPU, as evidenced by the resolution scaling data. At 1080p Low, the system achieves 143.9 FPS, which is close to the GPU's maximum output; if the CPU were a bottleneck, we would expect to see a plateau at lower resolutions. Instead, the FPS continues to increase as resolution decreases, indicating that the CPU has ample headroom. The 24 threads ensure that any background processes or streaming tasks in the horror game do not interfere with frame pacing, contributing to the consistent average FPS measurements across all settings.