The Medium

FAQ

Q: What is the average frame rate for this combo at 1080p with Medium settings?

A: At 1920x1080 with Medium settings, the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile combo delivers an average of 67 FPS, with a minimum of 57 FPS and a maximum of 77 FPS.

Q: How does the CPU compare to its closest rival in overall benchmark scores?

A: The Ryzen 9 8945HX has an average benchmark score of 76212, which is essentially tied with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX at 76155 (a 0.1% difference). It also sits within 0.6% of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which scores 75779.

Q: What is the GPU's percentile ranking among all tested graphics cards?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile ranks in the 75th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 29928. Its nearest rival, the RTX 3070 Ti, scores nearly identically at 29945, just 0.1% higher.

Q: At which resolution and settings does the combo achieve its highest frame rate?

A: The highest measured average FPS is 107, achieved at 1920x1080 with Low settings. The next best is 90 FPS at 2560x1440 with Low settings, showing that low preset significantly boosts performance.

Q: What is the combo's rank among all tested combinations in this game?

A: This combo ranks 2057 out of 3724 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the middle of the pack. This rank reflects its measured FPS across all resolution and settings combinations.

Q: Does the GPU support modern graphics APIs relevant to this game?

A: Yes, the RTX 5070 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, which are all modern APIs that The Medium can utilize for its rendering.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data reveals a clear performance hierarchy across presets, with the Low setting providing the most headroom and Ultra pushing the hardware to its limits. At 1920x1080, the jump from Low (107 FPS) to Medium (67 FPS) is a 40 FPS drop, while moving from Medium to High (48 FPS) costs another 19 FPS. The Ultra preset (38 FPS) is the only setting that falls below the 40 FPS threshold at this resolution.

For a balance of visual quality and smooth gameplay, Medium settings at 1080p appear to be the sweet spot. The 67 FPS average with a 57 FPS minimum stays above typical 60 FPS targets, and the 77 FPS maximum shows there is some headroom for demanding scenes. Stepping up to High drops the average to 48 FPS, which is still playable but may feel less fluid during fast camera movements in horror sequences.

At 2560x1440, the situation changes significantly. Medium delivers 56 FPS average (48 minimum, 65 maximum), which remains usable, but High drops to 40 FPS and Ultra to 32 FPS. For 1440p gaming, Medium is the recommended preset, as it maintains a playable frame rate while preserving more detail than Low. The Low preset at 1440p (90 FPS) is smooth but sacrifices too much visual fidelity for a horror game that relies on atmosphere.

At 3840x2160, the story is more challenging. Medium produces 44 FPS average (37 minimum, 51 maximum), which is below the 60 FPS ideal but still playable for a slower-paced horror title. High (32 FPS) and Ultra (25 FPS) become increasingly difficult to recommend. For 4K, the Low preset (71 FPS) is the only option that clears the 60 FPS bar, but it strips away much of the game's environmental detail.

The data suggests that Medium is the best overall preset for this combo, as it provides the most consistent experience across all three resolutions. The minimum frame rates of 37 FPS at 4K and 48 FPS at 1440p indicate that even Medium will have moments of strain, but the averages remain respectable for the genre's typically slower pacing.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a 5 nm process from TSMC, packing 21,900 million transistors on a 181 mm² die. Its 8 GB of GDDR7 memory runs across a 128-bit bus, delivering 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock is rated at 1500 MHz with 24 Gbps effective speed, while the GPU core operates between a 907 MHz base and 1425 MHz boost clock.

The GPU's compute capabilities include 4608 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 48 raster output pipelines. It also carries 36 ray tracing cores and 144 tensor cores, which are relevant for The Medium's use of ray-traced effects and any DLSS-related features. The pixel rate is 68.40 GPixel/s and the texture rate is 205.2 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance rated at 13.13 TFLOPS.

In the benchmark database, the RTX 5070 Mobile scores 20355 in PassMark G3D and 8279 in PassMark GPU Compute. Its OpenCL score is 122238 and Vulkan score is 116960, showing strong compute performance for a mobile part. The GPU's 75th percentile ranking places it above the majority of tested cards, though its average benchmark score of 29928 is nearly identical to the RTX 3070 Ti (29945) and RTX 2080 Ti (29783).

The measured FPS data shows that the GPU becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions and settings. At 4K Ultra, the combo manages only 25 FPS, while at 1080p Low it reaches 107 FPS. The 8 GB VRAM capacity is a notable consideration for The Medium, which is a game known for its detailed environments and dual-reality rendering technique. While the game's requirements are not in the fact pack, the significant frame rate drops at 4K suggest that memory bandwidth and capacity may be constraining at higher resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

This combo holds rank 2057 out of 3724 tested combinations in The Medium, placing it in the 55th percentile of all tested systems. This mid-pack ranking is somewhat surprising given the individual component strengths: the CPU sits in the 95th percentile of all processors, and the GPU is in the 75th percentile.

The disconnect between component rankings and combo ranking suggests that The Medium's performance characteristics do not favor this particular pairing. The game appears to be more GPU-intensive at higher settings, as evidenced by the sharp FPS drops when moving from Low to Ultra presets. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 107 FPS, but at 4K Ultra it falls to 25 FPS, representing a 76.6% reduction.

Compared to other combos in the database, this system's 2057 rank indicates that many configurations with lower-tier components achieve better results in this specific game. This could be due to the game's optimization for certain architectures or the mobile form factor's thermal constraints affecting sustained performance. The rank also reflects that The Medium may favor desktop components with higher sustained clocks over mobile parts that may throttle under load.

The combo's position in the middle of the pack suggests that while it can handle the game at reasonable settings, it is not a top-tier configuration for this title. Gamers with this combo should expect to use Medium settings at 1080p or 1440p for the best experience, rather than pushing for maximum visual fidelity.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on Zen 4 architecture with the Dragon Range codename. It operates on the AMD Socket FL1 with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz, drawing up to 55 W TDP. The chip is manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm process with 13,140 million transistors across a 2x 71 mm² die.

The CPU's cache hierarchy includes 64 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 64 MB of L3 cache. Memory support is limited to DDR5 with a dual-channel bus providing 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The processor also features PCIe Gen 5 with 28 lanes and includes integrated Radeon 610M graphics, though this iGPU is not used for gaming in this configuration.

Benchmark results show the CPU's strength in multi-threaded workloads. The Cinebench R23 multicore score of 42713 is particularly strong, while the single-core score of 6030 demonstrates solid single-thread performance. In PassMark tests, the multithread score is 51405 and single-thread is 3907. The CPU's 95th percentile ranking places it among the top processors in the database.

The Ryzen 9 8945HX's nearest rivals in the benchmark database are all high-end parts: the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (0.1% higher average score), AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P (0.4% lower), AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX (0.4% lower), and AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (0.6% higher). This clustering shows that the 8945HX is competitive with top-tier desktop and workstation processors despite being a mobile part.

In the context of The Medium, the CPU's high core count and strong multi-threading capabilities are likely not fully utilized, as the game's performance drops are more closely tied to resolution and settings changes than to CPU workload. The fact that FPS scales significantly with resolution and settings suggests the GPU is the primary bottleneck, especially at higher presets. At 1080p Low, the CPU may be more involved, but the 107 FPS result indicates it can handle the game's logic and physics without becoming a limiting factor.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The dataset provides FPS measurements at three resolutions and four settings levels, with some entries including minimum and maximum frame rates for the Medium preset.

At 1920x1080, the results are as follows:

• Low: 107 FPS average
• Medium: 67 FPS average (57 min, 77 max)
• High: 48 FPS average
• Ultra: 38 FPS average

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 90 FPS average
• Medium: 56 FPS average (48 min, 65 max)
• High: 40 FPS average
• Ultra: 32 FPS average

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 71 FPS average
• Medium: 44 FPS average (37 min, 51 max)
• High: 32 FPS average
• Ultra: 25 FPS average

The Medium preset is the only one with min/max data, providing insight into frame time consistency. At 1080p, the 57-77 FPS range shows a 20 FPS spread, which is relatively tight. At 1440p, the 48-65 FPS range widens slightly to 17 FPS. At 4K, the 37-51 FPS range narrows to 14 FPS, suggesting that the GPU is consistently constrained at this resolution.

The performance gap between Low and Medium settings is substantial across all resolutions. At 1080p, the difference is 40 FPS (107 vs 67), at 1440p it is 34 FPS (90 vs 56), and at 4K it is 27 FPS (71 vs 44). This indicates that Medium settings introduce significant rendering overhead compared to Low.

The gap between High and Ultra is smaller but still meaningful. At 1080p, the drop is 10 FPS (48 to 38), at 1440p it is 8 FPS (40 to 32), and at 4K it is 7 FPS (32 to 25). This suggests that Ultra settings add incremental visual enhancements that come at a moderate performance cost.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate scaling from 1080p to 4K reveals important information about the system's bottleneck characteristics. At Medium settings, the FPS progression is 67 (1080p) → 56 (1440p) → 44 (4K), representing a 16.4% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a 21.4% drop from 1440p to 4K. The cumulative drop from 1080p to 4K is 34.3%.

At Low settings, the scaling is more dramatic: 107 (1080p) → 90 (1440p) → 71 (4K), with drops of 15.9% and 21.1% respectively. The total reduction from 1080p to 4K is 33.6%. At High settings, the progression is 48 → 40 → 32, showing drops of 16.7% and 20.0%, for a total reduction of 33.3%. Ultra settings show 38 → 32 → 25, with drops of 15.8% and 21.9%, totaling 34.2%.

The consistent percentage drops across all settings indicate that resolution scaling follows a predictable pattern. The roughly 16-17% drop from 1080p to 1440p and 20-22% drop from 1440p to 4K suggest that the GPU is the primary limiting factor at all settings. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see smaller FPS drops at higher resolutions, as the GPU would become more saturated.

The fact that the FPS does not double when moving from 4K to 1080p (which would require 50 FPS at 4K to become 100 FPS at 1080p for a 2x pixel count) indicates that the system is not purely GPU-limited at all times. The 107 FPS at 1080p Low versus 71 FPS at 4K Low represents a 1.5x increase for 4x the pixel count, suggesting that some other factor, possibly memory bandwidth or CPU overhead, begins to play a role at lower resolutions.

The minimum frame rates at Medium settings show that the system maintains reasonably consistent performance. At 4K, the 37 FPS minimum is 84.1% of the 44 FPS average, while at 1440p the 48 FPS minimum is 85.7% of the 56 FPS average. This consistency suggests that the game's demanding scenes do not cause severe frame rate dips, which is favorable for a horror title where sudden performance drops could be jarring.