The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combo delivers a fascinating performance curve in The Medium, one that clearly separates the GPU’s raw power from the fixed-camera horror game’s engine limits. The data shows a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound, yet the scaling between presets reveals where the RTX 4090’s architecture flexes its muscles and where it simply runs into a wall. This pairing ranks 76th out of 1689 tested combos for this title, placing it in the top 4.5% of all configurations measured, which is a strong result but not the absolute pinnacle, indicating that even this flagship hardware leaves some performance on the table depending on settings.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent, but the shape of that curve changes dramatically depending on the quality preset. At Low settings, the combo moves from 144.1 FPS at 1920x1080 down to 127.7 FPS at 3840x2160, a reduction of only 11.4%. This modest decline suggests that at Low settings, even at 4K, the game is not fully stressing the RTX 4090’s rendering pipeline; the bottleneck shifts toward the CPU or engine logic. In contrast, at Ultra settings, the same resolution jump sees a much larger drop, from 73.3 FPS at 1080p to 47.5 FPS at 4K, a 35.2% decrease. This wider gap at Ultra indicates that the higher-quality effects, likely including volumetric lighting and shadows, are heavily taxing the GPU’s compute units, making 4K Ultra a genuine stress test.

The Medium preset shows an interesting middle ground. At 1080p Medium, the combo hits 122.7 FPS, which falls to 85 FPS at 4K Medium, a 30.7% drop. The High preset follows a similar pattern, going from 96.3 FPS at 1080p to 63.4 FPS at 4K, a 34.2% reduction. The fact that Medium and High scale so similarly at 4K suggests that the game’s engine has a performance cliff between those presets and Ultra, where the additional effects push the GPU from a comfortable 60+ FPS zone into sub-60 territory at 4K. The data indicates that at 1440p, the combo is far more comfortable, with Medium delivering 111.7 FPS and High delivering 79.7 FPS, both well above the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay.

GPU Role

The RTX 4090’s 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus provides a 1.01 TB/s bandwidth, which is more than sufficient for The Medium’s asset streaming. The data shows no signs of memory capacity being a limiting factor, even at 4K Ultra, where the average FPS of 47.5 is driven by compute load rather than VRAM exhaustion. The card’s boost clock of 2520 MHz and base clock of 2235 MHz are high for a GPU of this size, and the benchmark results reflect that the Ada Lovelace architecture scales well with resolution increases when the preset demands it.

The GPU’s FP32 performance of 82.58 TFLOPS is the key driver here. At 4K Low, the card produces 127.7 FPS, which is 2.7 times the 47.5 FPS seen at 4K Ultra. This 2.7x spread between the lowest and highest quality settings at a single resolution demonstrates that the RTX 4090 has ample headroom to brute-force through simple scenes, but the Ultra preset’s additional ray-traced or high-fidelity effects cut deeply into its throughput. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s are both exceptionally high, yet the game’s fixed-camera angles often render large, detailed environments that challenge even these figures. The GPU’s 128 RT cores are present, but the measured data does not isolate ray tracing, so their impact is embedded in the overall preset scaling.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 76 out of 1689 tested configurations places it in the 95.5th percentile of all CPU-GPU pairings for The Medium. This is an elite result, but the data suggests that the Ryzen 9 5950X’s 16 cores and 32 threads are not the primary reason for this high placement. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 49062 puts it just 0.2% behind the Intel Core i5-14600K and 0.6% behind the i5-14600KF, which are far cheaper, lower-core-count processors. This indicates that in a GPU-bound title like The Medium, the 5950X’s massive core count provides negligible advantage over a newer mid-range chip, and the ranking is almost entirely driven by the RTX 4090’s dominance.

The GPU itself holds a 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 66473. Its nearest rivals in the database are professional workstation cards like the NVIDIA Tesla T4 and Tesla P40, which are not gaming-focused, underscoring how far ahead the RTX 4090 is for consumer gaming workloads. The deltaPct values against these rivals are all within 1.3%, meaning the RTX 4090 is not the single fastest GPU ever tested, but it sits at the very top of the consumer stack. For The Medium specifically, this combo’s rank is slightly lower than its theoretical hardware potential, implying the game’s engine does not fully utilize the CPU’s 64 MB of L3 cache or the GPU’s multi-threaded capabilities.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers 144.1 FPS on Low, 122.7 FPS on Medium, 96.3 FPS on High, and 73.3 FPS on Ultra. The 1080p Low result is near the 144 Hz refresh rate that many competitive monitors use, but the game is a horror title, not an esports shooter, so this is less relevant. The step from Medium to High costs 26.4 FPS, while the step from High to Ultra costs 23 FPS, showing a fairly linear degradation at this resolution. At 2560x1440, the numbers shift to 135.3 FPS on Low, 111.7 FPS on Medium, 79.7 FPS on High, and 60.6 FPS on Ultra. The 1440p Ultra result of 60.6 FPS is just above the 60 FPS target, making it a viable option for a 60 Hz display, but the 19.1 FPS drop from High to Ultra is significant.

At 3840x2160, the data reveals the most dramatic changes. Low produces 127.7 FPS, which is still very playable, but Medium falls to 85 FPS, High to 63.4 FPS, and Ultra to 47.5 FPS. The 4K High result of 63.4 FPS is acceptable, but the Ultra result is below the 60 FPS threshold, requiring either a VRR display or a slight settings tweak. The gap between 4K Medium and 4K High is 21.6 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is 15.9 FPS, indicating that the Medium preset offers the best balance of visual fidelity and frame rate at 4K. The 1080p Low to 4K Low difference is only 16.4 FPS, confirming that Low settings are heavily CPU-limited even at 4K.

Settings Recommendations

For a 4K display, the Medium preset is the clear recommendation based on the measured data. It delivers 85 FPS at 3840x2160, which is 21.6 FPS higher than High and 37.5 FPS higher than Ultra, while still offering a significant visual upgrade over Low. The 85 FPS result is smooth on most modern displays and leaves headroom for any background tasks. If a 60 Hz display is the target, High at 63.4 FPS is also viable, but Medium provides a larger margin of error for scene complexity spikes. For 1440p users, Ultra at 60.6 FPS is playable, but Medium at 111.7 FPS is the better choice for those who prioritize frame rate stability, especially since the game’s horror atmosphere benefits from smooth camera pans.

At 1080p, the Ultra preset at 73.3 FPS is the most visually rich option, and the data shows the combo has enough power to handle it without dropping below 60 FPS. However, the jump from High to Ultra at 1080p costs 23 FPS, which is a steep price for marginal visual gains. The data suggests that High at 96.3 FPS is the sweet spot for 1080p, offering a high frame rate that eliminates any potential for judder. For players with 144 Hz monitors, Low at 144.1 FPS hits the refresh rate ceiling, but this is not recommended for a horror game where atmosphere matters more than competitive response time. The Medium preset at 122.7 FPS is the most balanced option for high-refresh 1080p displays.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 5950X’s 16 cores and 32 threads are largely idle in The Medium, as the data shows the game is heavily GPU-bound at all resolutions. The CPU’s boost clock of 4.90 GHz and base clock of 3.40 GHz are respectable, but the measured FPS at 1080p Low (144.1 FPS) is not dramatically higher than at 4K Low (127.7 FPS), indicating that the CPU is not the primary constraint even at lower resolutions. The 3DMark single-thread score of 944 and multi-thread score of 11597 suggest strong per-core performance, but the game’s fixed-camera design likely relies on a limited number of threads for scene rendering and AI logic.

The CPU’s Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 38607 is exceptional, yet this does not translate into a proportional advantage in The Medium when compared to the Intel Core i5-14600K, which has a 0.2% higher average benchmark score. This suggests the game’s engine does not scale beyond a handful of cores, making the 5950X’s extra cores irrelevant for this title. The 64 MB of L3 cache is a large pool, but the data does not show any measurable benefit in FPS consistency or minimum frame rates, as none are provided. The CPU’s memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s on dual-channel DDR4 is sufficient, but the GPU’s 1.01 TB/s bandwidth is the dominant factor in feeding the rendering pipeline. In practical terms, the 5950X is not a bottleneck, but it is also not a contributor to the combo’s high ranking; it simply stays out of the RTX 4090’s way.