The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title from 2021, presents an unusual scaling pattern for this combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. The measured data reveals a system where the GPU is the dominant constraint at higher resolutions, but the CPU demonstrates surprising influence at 1080p. This analysis walks through the benchmark results step by step, interpreting what the frame rates indicate about the hardware interaction.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 clearly shows the RTX 5080 becoming the limiting factor as pixel count rises. At Low settings, the drop from 179.4 FPS at 1080p to 131.9 FPS at 4K represents a 26.5% reduction, which is substantial but not catastrophic. The gap widens considerably at Medium settings, where 1080p produces 125.6 FPS but 4K falls to 83.7 FPS, a 33.4% decline. This pattern intensifies further at High settings: 90.2 FPS at 1080p versus 61.9 FPS at 4K, a 31.4% reduction.

The most telling data point comes from Ultra settings. Here, the 4K result of 45.9 FPS is only 65.8% of the 1080p figure of 69.7 FPS. This steep drop indicates that the game's Ultra preset places an enormous load on the GPU, likely due to the dual-reality rendering mechanic that The Medium uses. The game renders two simultaneous worlds in certain sequences, effectively doubling the pixel workload. At 4K Ultra, the RTX 5080 with its 16 GB of GDDR7 memory struggles to maintain playable frame rates, dipping below the 60 FPS threshold.

What stands out is the non-linear nature of the scaling. Between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings, the drop is only 6.9% (from 179.4 to 167.1 FPS), suggesting the CPU is still feeding the GPU adequately. However, the 1440p to 4K transition at Low settings shows a 21.1% decline (167.1 to 131.9 FPS), indicating the GPU begins to hit its compute limits. The data suggests that for this title, 1440p represents a sweet spot where the Ryzen 9 7900X's 12 cores and 24 threads can keep up with the RTX 5080's output, but 4K pushes the GPU into a state where pixel throughput becomes the sole bottleneck.

Settings Recommendations

Examining the measured rows, the Medium preset delivers the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1080p, Medium produces 125.6 FPS, which is 39.3% higher than High's 90.2 FPS and 80.2% higher than Ultra's 69.7 FPS. At 1440p, Medium hits 105.6 FPS, comfortably above the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay, while High manages 74.8 FPS and Ultra drops to 58.9 FPS. The 4K resolution tells a more complex story: Medium achieves 83.7 FPS, which is excellent, but Ultra falls to 45.9 FPS, which is below the ideal playability threshold.

The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates (179.4 FPS at 1080p, 167.1 FPS at 1440p, 131.9 FPS at 4K), likely sacrifices the atmospheric lighting and shadow quality that define the horror genre. The Medium preset appears to be the pragmatic choice, offering 83.7 FPS at 4K, which is 35.2% faster than High's 61.9 FPS and 82.4% faster than Ultra's 45.9 FPS. For a game that relies on mood and tension, the visual fidelity of Medium combined with its frame rate headroom makes it the recommended setting for this hardware combination.

At 1080p, even Ultra is playable at 69.7 FPS, but the 45.9 FPS result at 4K Ultra suggests that this preset is only viable for players who prioritize graphical fidelity over smoothness. The data indicates that Medium is the only preset that maintains above 60 FPS at all three tested resolutions, making it the safest recommendation for consistent performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 features 16 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth. Its base clock of 2295 MHz and boost clock of 2617 MHz, combined with 10752 shading units, provide substantial compute power. The benchmark results show the GPU performing at the 89th percentile compared to all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59188. However, the nearest rivals listed — the Intel Arc A570M with a 1.6% higher score, the Intel Arc Pro A60 with a 1.9% lower score, the Intel Arc A580 with a 2.5% higher score, and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500X with a 2.6% higher score — suggest that the RTX 5080's raw benchmark performance is closely matched by less renowned cards.

In The Medium specifically, the GPU's VRAM capacity of 16 GB appears sufficient, as the frame rates do not collapse at 4K, which would indicate memory overflow. The 960.0 GB/s bandwidth supports the high-resolution textures and the dual-world rendering, but the Ultra preset's 45.9 FPS at 4K reveals that the GPU's compute throughput, not memory bandwidth, is the limiting factor. The RTX 5080's 56.28 TFLOPS FP32 performance is impressive, yet the game's demand for simultaneous rendering of two perspectives at high fidelity exceeds what the GPU can handle at 4K Ultra.

The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K (131.9 to 45.9 FPS) represents a 65.2% performance reduction, which is a steeper drop than the 1080p equivalent (179.4 to 69.7 FPS, a 61.1% reduction). This demonstrates that the GPU's workload scales super-linearly with resolution when the game's unique rendering features are enabled, making the RTX 5080's role as the primary bottleneck more pronounced at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 ranks 47th out of 1689 tested combos in The Medium. This places it in the top 2.8% of all combinations, indicating exceptional performance. The ranking reflects the synergy between the CPU's 12 cores and 24 threads with the GPU's 10752 shading units, resulting in frame rates that are competitive with some of the most powerful systems.

The CPU alone ranks at the 93rd percentile against all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 50556. Its nearest rival is the Intel Core Ultra 5 235 with a score of 50598, a mere 0.1% difference. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT scores 50738, 0.4% higher, while the Intel Core i7-13850HX and Intel Core i9-13980HX score 50827 and 50944 respectively, representing 0.5% and 0.8% higher scores. These marginal differences indicate that the Ryzen 9 7900X is positioned at the top of the performance hierarchy, and this strength carries into the game-specific results.

The GPU's percentile rank of 89 among all GPUs is slightly lower than the CPU's, which contributes to the combination's overall position. The 47th rank out of 1689 suggests that while the CPU is a top-tier performer, the GPU, despite its high benchmark scores, faces stiffer competition in this particular title. The combination's performance in The Medium is therefore more dependent on the GPU's ability to handle the game's rendering demands than on the CPU's processing power.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X operates at a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.60 GHz, with 12 cores based on the Zen 4 architecture. Its 64 MB of shared L3 cache and 83.2 GB/s memory bandwidth support the GPU's data demands. In The Medium, the CPU's influence is most visible at 1080p, where the frame rates of 179.4 FPS at Low settings suggest that the CPU can drive the GPU to high output levels. The 3DMark 16-thread benchmark score of 10972 and the Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 43695 indicate strong multi-threaded performance, which is relevant for a game that may offload certain tasks to additional threads.

The single-thread performance, measured at 1093 in 3DMark single-thread and 6168 in Cinebench R23 single-core, supports the high frame rates seen at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the CPU is not the limiting factor; the GPU's performance across different presets shows a clear hierarchy. The fact that 1080p Low achieves 179.4 FPS while 4K Low achieves 131.9 FPS means the CPU can maintain frame delivery even when the GPU is less stressed.

However, the CPU's role becomes more nuanced when comparing the 1080p to 1440p scaling at Low settings. The drop from 179.4 to 167.1 FPS is relatively modest, indicating that the CPU's 24 threads can keep up with the GPU's output. In contrast, the 1440p to 4K transition at Low settings shows a more significant drop to 131.9 FPS, which points to the GPU becoming the bottleneck. The CPU's 93rd percentile ranking suggests it has headroom to support even more demanding GPU configurations, but in this pairing, the RTX 5080's performance ceiling is reached first at higher resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the Low preset delivers 179.4 FPS, which is the highest measured frame rate in the entire dataset. Medium follows at 125.6 FPS, High at 90.2 FPS, and Ultra at 69.7 FPS. The progression from Low to Ultra represents a 61.1% reduction in performance, showing the dramatic impact of the game's graphical presets. The 1080p results demonstrate that even the most demanding settings remain playable, with Ultra exceeding the 60 FPS threshold.

Moving to 2560x1440, the Low preset achieves 167.1 FPS, a 6.9% drop from 1080p. Medium produces 105.6 FPS, High reaches 74.8 FPS, and Ultra falls to 58.9 FPS. The Ultra setting at 1440p is the first measured configuration that drops below 60 FPS, indicating that the GPU's compute resources are becoming strained at this resolution with maximum settings.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset still delivers 131.9 FPS, which confirms the GPU's raw power. Medium hits 83.7 FPS, High manages 61.9 FPS, and Ultra drops to 45.9 FPS. The 4K Ultra result is the lowest measured frame rate, and it represents a 65.2% reduction from the 1080p Ultra result. The data shows that for a smooth 60 FPS experience at 4K, the Medium preset is the maximum viable option, while at 1080p and 1440p, High settings provide good performance without requiring the compromise of Medium.