The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Radeon RX 9070 XT combination delivers a highly playable experience in The Medium, though the data reveals a clear tension between visual fidelity and frame rate. Across all four tested settings tiers, the system produces a wide performance envelope, from a highly fluid 148.8 FPS at 1080p Low to a demanding 37.4 FPS at 4K Ultra. The benchmark results indicate that this pairing is capable of handling the game’s fixed-camera horror presentation, but users will need to make deliberate choices about resolution and quality to hit their preferred performance targets.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate data shows a predictable yet steep penalty as resolution increases, which is characteristic of a GPU-bound title. Moving from 1080p to 1440p at Ultra settings reduces the average frame rate from 55.2 FPS to 46.7 FPS, a drop of approximately 15.4%. The subsequent jump to 4K Ultra is more punishing, with performance falling to 37.4 FPS, representing a further 19.9% decline from the 1440p figure. This scaling pattern strongly indicates that the Radeon RX 9070 XT is the primary limiting component at higher resolutions, as the pixel throughput demands of 4K overwhelm the GPU's capabilities.

Conversely, at lower settings, the scaling curve flattens somewhat. At Low settings, the transition from 1080p (148.8 FPS) to 1440p (122.3 FPS) results in a 17.8% drop, while the move to 4K (96.8 FPS) costs another 20.8%. This suggests that even when the graphical load is reduced, the GPU remains the bottleneck, though the absolute frame rates are high enough to mask this limitation. The data shows that the CPU is rarely the constraint here, as the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X provides ample headroom, allowing the GPU to scale its workload consistently across all resolution points.

The most significant performance cliff appears between Medium and Ultra settings. At 4K, the gap between Medium (61.9 FPS) and Ultra (37.4 FPS) is a substantial 39.6% loss, highlighting how the Ultra preset’s added effects and texture detail disproportionately tax the GPU. For users targeting a smooth 60 FPS experience, the data suggests that 4K Medium is the practical ceiling, while 1440p High offers a more comfortable margin above that threshold.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution for maintaining 60 FPS in The Medium with this hardware?*

A: The data shows that 4K Medium (61.9 FPS) is the only 4K setting that averages above 60 FPS. At 1440p, High (57 FPS) falls just short, while Medium (76.9 FPS) and Low (122.3 FPS) comfortably exceed it. At 1080p, all settings except Ultra (55.2 FPS) achieve over 60 FPS.

Q: How large is the performance gap between Low and Ultra settings?

A: The difference is substantial across all resolutions. At 1080p, the gap is 93.6 FPS (from 148.8 to 55.2 FPS). At 1440p, it is 75.6 FPS (from 122.3 to 46.7 FPS). At 4K, the difference narrows slightly to 59.4 FPS (from 96.8 to 37.4 FPS), but the relative cost of Ultra remains steep.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for the frame rate results?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the decisive factor. The Ryzen 9 7900X, with its high multi-threaded scores (43,695 in Cinebench R23 multi-core), provides far more processing power than this game requires, evidenced by the consistent frame rate scaling that tracks with resolution rather than CPU load.

Q: Does the RX 9070 XT’s 16 GB of VRAM affect performance at 4K?

A: The measured data shows playable frame rates at 4K Low (96.8 FPS) and Medium (61.9 FPS), suggesting the 16 GB GDDR6 memory is sufficient for these settings. The significant drop to 37.4 FPS at Ultra is more likely due to the GPU’s compute limitations rather than a memory capacity issue.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The system sits at rank 418 out of 1689 total combinations tested for The Medium, placing it in the top 24.8% of all tested systems for this title, which aligns with its high-end component selection.

GPU Role

The Radeon RX 9070 XT’s specifications directly explain its performance profile in The Medium. Built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with 4,096 shading units, the GPU’s boost clock of 2970 MHz and game clock of 2400 MHz provide the raw compute power necessary for the game’s fixed-camera scenes. The 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 644.6 GB/s of bandwidth, proves adequate for the game’s texture streaming, as evidenced by the stable frame rates at 4K Medium (61.9 FPS) and 1440p High (57 FPS).

The GPU’s 64 ray tracing cores are relevant given The Medium’s use of split-screen rendering and reflective surfaces. However, the data shows that enabling the highest settings (Ultra) at 4K (37.4 FPS) pushes the GPU to its limit, suggesting that the ray tracing and post-processing effects are particularly demanding. The 48.66 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is substantial, but the game’s engine appears to scale heavily with pixel count rather than raw compute, as shown by the 39.6% frame rate drop from Medium to Ultra at 4K.

The GPU’s position in the benchmark database, ranking in the 82nd percentile among all GPUs, confirms its high-end status. Its average benchmark score of 39,647 puts it in close competition with professional and workstation cards, though its nearest rivals (AMD Radeon Pro 575, NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile) score nearly identically, with deltas of -0.1% and 0.2% respectively. For The Medium specifically, the GPU performs as expected for a modern high-end part, delivering smooth 60 FPS gameplay at 1440p Medium (76.9 FPS) and 1080p High (65.9 FPS), while struggling to maintain playable rates at 4K Ultra (37.4 FPS).

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates reveal a consistent hierarchy across all resolutions. At 1080p, the system produces its best results: Low settings hit 148.8 FPS, Medium reaches 96 FPS, High achieves 65.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 55.2 FPS. The 1080p Ultra figure is notable because it represents the only sub-60 FPS result at this resolution, indicating that even at the lowest pixel count, the Ultra preset’s effects are too heavy for the GPU to maintain a smooth experience.

Moving to 1440p, the frame rates scale down proportionally. Low settings deliver 122.3 FPS, Medium drops to 76.9 FPS, High falls to 57 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 46.7 FPS. The 1440p High result is particularly telling—it sits just below the 60 FPS threshold, suggesting that users seeking a balanced visual and performance experience may need to step down to Medium to ensure smooth gameplay.

At 4K, the GPU’s limitations become most apparent. Low settings still produce a respectable 96.8 FPS, and Medium maintains a playable 61.9 FPS. However, High drops to 43.3 FPS, and Ultra falls to 37.4 FPS. The 4K results show that the RX 9070 XT is capable of 4K gaming, but only at lower presets. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is 59.4 FPS, which represents a 61.4% performance penalty for the highest visual quality.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is a powerhouse that far exceeds the requirements of The Medium. With 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, the CPU’s multi-threaded performance is exceptional, scoring 43,695 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 18,351 in Cinebench R20 multi-core. These scores place it in the 93rd percentile among all CPUs, and its average benchmark score of 50,556 puts it in a dead heat with its nearest rivals, such as the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 (delta -0.1%) and AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT (delta -0.4%).

The CPU’s high core count and boost clock of 5.60 GHz ensure that it never becomes a bottleneck in this title. The game’s fixed-camera angles and limited simultaneous on-screen elements do not stress multi-core processing heavily, meaning the 7900X’s power is largely untapped. This is evidenced by the fact that frame rates scale almost exclusively with resolution and settings, not with CPU load. The 3DMark scores further support this: the CPU achieves 12,536 in max threads and 1,093 in single-thread, demonstrating balanced performance that can handle both lightly-threaded game logic and background tasks.

The CPU’s 64 MB of shared L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (83.2 GB/s bandwidth) provide a robust platform for the GPU to receive data quickly. However, the benchmark data suggests that this memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor in The Medium, as the GPU’s performance at 4K Ultra (37.4 FPS) is clearly constrained by its own compute limits rather than data delivery. Overall, the Ryzen 9 7900X serves as an ideal companion to the RX 9070 XT, offering enough headroom to ensure that the GPU is always the primary driver of frame rates, which is the expected behavior for a high-end gaming system in a GPU-heavy title like The Medium.