The Medium

The Medium, a fixed-camera horror title built on Unreal Engine 4, presents a demanding workload that scales dramatically with resolution. Paired with the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050, the measured frame rates reveal a configuration that is strictly bound by the GPU at higher resolutions, while the CPU's substantial headroom becomes apparent only at 1080p. The data shows a system capable of smooth play at 1080p with adjusted settings, but one that struggles to maintain playable framerates at 4K, regardless of quality preset.

Resolution Scaling

The performance trajectory from 1080p to 4K is steep and unforgiving, clearly identifying the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 as the primary bottleneck in this pairing. At 1080p with Low settings, the combo produces an average of 80 FPS. When the resolution is increased to 1440p, that figure drops by 16.3% to 67 FPS, and at 4K, it falls to 53 FPS—a 33.8% reduction from the 1080p baseline. This pattern confirms that the GPU is the limiting component, as the workload scales directly with pixel count, overwhelming the RTX 5050's 8 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory interface.

The scaling becomes more punishing as settings increase. With Medium settings, the 1080p average of 50 FPS drops to 42 FPS at 1440p (a 16% decrease) and further to 33 FPS at 4K (a 34% decrease from 1080p). The High preset tells a similar story: 36 FPS at 1080p, 30 FPS at 1440p, and 24 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding only 28 FPS at 1080p, 24 FPS at 1440p, and a nearly unplayable 19 FPS at 4K.

The delta between Low and Ultra at each resolution highlights how much headroom the RTX 5050 lacks. At 1080p, the difference between Low and Ultra is 52 FPS, representing a 65% performance loss. At 4K, the same settings gap is 34 FPS, a 64% loss. This consistency indicates that the GPU is saturated even at the lowest settings, and the CPU's role is minimal in dictating these framerates. The Ryzen 9 8945HX, with its 16 cores and 32 threads, is never the limiting factor; the data suggests the GPU is pegged at its maximum output across all tested configurations.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average framerate achievable with this combo?

A: The highest measured average is 80 FPS, achieved at 1920x1080 resolution with the Low settings preset.

Q: Can this system handle 4K gaming in The Medium?

A: The data shows that 4K is not viable for smooth gameplay. The best 4K result is 53 FPS on Low settings, but Medium drops to 33 FPS, High to 24 FPS, and Ultra to 19 FPS. Only the Low preset approaches a playable range, and even that is below the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: How does the RTX 5050's performance compare to its nearest rivals in general benchmarks?

A: In aggregate benchmark scores, the RTX 5050 sits at the 66th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL, is 0.6% faster, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is 1.6% slower. The NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile is 1.6% faster.

Q: What is the difference in FPS between the Medium and High presets at 1440p?

A: At 2560x1440, the Medium preset yields an average of 42 FPS, while the High preset produces 30 FPS. This represents a 28.6% performance drop when moving from Medium to High.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU more responsible for the framerates seen in this game?

A: The benchmark results indicate the GPU is the dominant factor. The framerate scales inversely with resolution and settings, which are GPU-bound variables. The CPU's high core count and clock speeds do not translate into higher FPS, as the game's workload is not processor-limited in these measurements.

Q: What kind of frametime consistency does the Medium preset offer?

A: The Medium preset is the only one with reported minimum and maximum framerates. At 1080p, the average is 50 FPS with a minimum of 42 and maximum of 57. At 1440p, the average is 42 FPS with a range of 36 to 48. At 4K, the average is 33 FPS with a range of 28 to 38.

Settings Recommendations

Given the measured data, the Medium settings preset offers the most balanced experience, though it requires a resolution compromise. At 1080p, Medium delivers an average of 50 FPS with a minimum of 42 FPS, providing a mostly smooth experience with some dips below the 60 FPS ideal. This is the only preset at 1080p that stays above 40 FPS on average, making it the recommended choice for playability.

Stepping up to High at 1080p drops the average to 36 FPS, which is a 28% reduction from Medium. The visual fidelity gain does not justify the performance cost, as the framerate becomes noticeably less fluid. The Low preset at 1080p achieves 80 FPS, but this comes at the cost of significant visual quality, which is counterproductive in a horror title that relies on atmosphere and detail.

At 1440p, the Medium preset is the only viable option, yielding 42 FPS. This is playable but not ideal, and users with 1440p displays should accept Medium as the practical ceiling. High and Ultra at 1440p produce 30 FPS and 24 FPS respectively, which are too low for a smooth experience. The data suggests that 4K should be avoided entirely, as even the Low preset at 53 FPS fails to reach a consistent 60 FPS, and any higher settings result in sub-30 FPS averages.

For the best experience per the measured rows, the recommendation is to run the game at 1920x1080 with the Medium preset. This configuration provides the highest average framerate that still maintains a minimum above 40 FPS, offering a stable baseline for a horror game where sudden frame drops can break immersion.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 ranks 2309 out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium. This places the system in the bottom 20.7% of all configurations tested for this specific game, indicating that it is not well-suited to the title's demanding rendering requirements.

This low ranking is driven entirely by the GPU's limited capabilities. The RTX 5050, despite being a current-generation part, falls into the 66th percentile of all GPUs based on average benchmark scores. Its nearest rivals in raw compute are older or lower-tier parts like the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL (0.6% faster) and the AMD Radeon HD 8970M (1% faster), which underscores its position as an entry-level discrete GPU.

The CPU, in contrast, is a high-end mobile part. The Ryzen 9 8945HX sits in the 95th percentile of all CPUs, with a multi-threaded Cinebench R23 score of 42713. This is 0.6% faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D in average benchmark scores, and 0.1% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX. However, this CPU strength does not translate to in-game performance, as the combo rank is dragged down by the GPU's inability to push frames at higher resolutions and settings.

The gap between the CPU's high percentile and the combo's low rank illustrates a fundamental imbalance. The data shows that the Ryzen 9 8945HX is capable of feeding the GPU far more data than the RTX 5050 can process, making the combo inefficient for a game like The Medium that is heavily GPU-bound at the tested settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, codenamed Dragon Range. It operates with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, and it is built on TSMC's 5 nm process node. This configuration provides substantial compute headroom, as reflected in its benchmarks: a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 42713 and a single-core score of 6030.

In The Medium, this CPU power is largely underutilized. The measured framerates scale with resolution and settings, which are GPU-bound variables. At 1080p Low, the system produces 80 FPS, and at 4K Ultra it drops to 19 FPS. If the CPU were the limiting factor, the framerate would remain relatively constant regardless of resolution, as the CPU's workload (draw calls, physics, game logic) does not increase proportionally with pixel count.

The data shows no such constancy. Instead, the framerate falls by roughly 34% from 1080p to 4K at the same settings, which is a clear indicator of GPU saturation. The CPU's 64 MB of L3 cache and dual-channel DDR5 memory support (with 83.2 GB/s bandwidth) are more than sufficient for the game's needs, and the 5.40 GHz boost clock ensures that single-threaded tasks are handled quickly.

However, the CPU's high performance does not rescue the combo's ranking. The 2309th place out of 2911 combos is a direct result of the GPU's limitations, not the CPU's. The Ryzen 9 8945HX provides the necessary horsepower to avoid being a bottleneck, but it cannot compensate for the RTX 5050's modest 13.17 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. In this specific game, the CPU role is to stay out of the way, which it does successfully, but the overall experience is still constrained by the graphics card.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The benchmark data provides a complete matrix of average framerates across four resolutions and four settings presets. All measurements are averages, with minimum and maximum values only recorded for the Medium preset.

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows:

• Low: 80 FPS average
• Medium: 50 FPS average, with a minimum of 42 FPS and a maximum of 57 FPS
• High: 36 FPS average
• Ultra: 28 FPS average

At 2560x1440, the results are:

• Low: 67 FPS average
• Medium: 42 FPS average, with a minimum of 36 FPS and a maximum of 48 FPS
• High: 30 FPS average
• Ultra: 24 FPS average

At 3840x2160, the results are:

• Low: 53 FPS average
• Medium: 33 FPS average, with a minimum of 28 FPS and a maximum of 38 FPS
• High: 24 FPS average
• Ultra: 19 FPS average

The progression shows a consistent pattern: each step up in resolution reduces the average FPS by approximately 16-17% when going from 1080p to 1440p, and another 20-24% when going from 1440p to 4K. The Medium preset's minimum framerates are particularly telling—at 1080p, the minimum is 42 FPS, which is 84% of the average, indicating relatively stable frame pacing. At 4K, the minimum is 28 FPS, which is 85% of the average, showing that the framerate is consistently low rather than spiky.

The Ultra preset is uniformly unplayable across all resolutions, with a peak average of 28 FPS at 1080p. The High preset only becomes acceptable at 1080p, where it hits 36 FPS, but this is still below the generally accepted 40 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay. The Low preset is the only one that exceeds 60 FPS, and only at 1080p. The data paints a clear picture: the RTX 5050 is a 1080p-class GPU for this title, and even then, users must choose between visual quality and performance.