The Medium

The Medium is a horror title that stresses both CPU and GPU, and the measured data for the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 combination reveals a system that is consistently capable but rarely maxes out its potential. The data shows a clear hierarchy across settings and resolutions, with the RTX 5090’s massive memory pool and high compute throughput doing the heavy lifting in a game that favors visual fidelity. This analysis breaks down the measured FPS rows to determine the optimal experience, the role of each component, and how this particular pairing stacks up against the broader benchmark database.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data indicates that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium setting delivers an average of 98 FPS, with a minimum of 84 FPS and a maximum of 113 FPS. This is a substantial jump from the High preset, which averages 70 FPS, and it ensures that frame pacing remains smooth during the game’s frequent scene transitions. Moving up to 2560x1440, Medium again proves to be the sweet spot, producing an average of 83 FPS with a minimum of 70 FPS and a maximum of 95 FPS. The 70 FPS minimum is crucial for maintaining playability, as it stays above the threshold where stutter becomes noticeable in horror titles.

At 4K (3840x2160), the Medium preset is the only viable option for a consistently fluid experience, yielding an average of 65 FPS with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 75 FPS. The High preset at 4K drops to 47 FPS, which is borderline for a game that relies on tense, slow-paced exploration. The Ultra preset is not recommended at any resolution, as it produces averages of 56 FPS at 1080p, 47 FPS at 1440p, and 37 FPS at 4K, all of which fall below the 60 FPS target that the Medium preset achieves. The Low preset, while offering high frame rates (157 FPS at 1080p, 132 FPS at 1440p, 104 FPS at 4K), sacrifices the atmospheric lighting and shadow quality that define the game’s horror aesthetic, making it a less desirable choice despite the performance headroom.

For the best experience per the measured rows, Medium is the clear recommendation. It provides a 40% improvement over High at 1080p (98 FPS vs. 70 FPS) and a 28% improvement at 4K (65 FPS vs. 47 FPS). The data suggests that the Medium preset is tuned to the capabilities of this hardware, avoiding the steep performance penalties of Ultra while maintaining visual integrity.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX is a 16-core, 32-thread processor based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a base clock of 2.50 GHz and a boost clock of 5.40 GHz. In The Medium, which is not heavily multithreaded, the CPU’s high single-core performance is more relevant than its impressive multi-core throughput. The benchmark results show a Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6030 and a multi-core score of 42713, indicating that the CPU can handle both lightly threaded game logic and background tasks without becoming a bottleneck.

The data reveals that the CPU is not the limiting factor at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the difference between the Low and Medium presets is 59 FPS (157 FPS vs. 98 FPS), which is a 38% drop, suggesting that the GPU is still the primary driver of frame rate changes. However, the CPU’s 5.40 GHz boost clock ensures that the game’s draw calls and physics calculations are processed quickly, preventing any CPU-bound stutters that could break immersion. The processor’s 64 MB of L3 cache also helps maintain consistent frame times, as evidenced by the tight minimum FPS figures at Medium settings (84 FPS at 1080p, 70 FPS at 1440p).

Compared to its nearest rivals in the benchmark database, the Ryzen 9 8945HX posts an average benchmark score of 76212, which is 0.1% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and 0.6% higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This marginal lead in synthetic tests translates to negligible differences in actual gameplay, meaning the CPU’s role here is to provide a stable platform for the GPU to operate at full capacity. The 32 threads are largely idle in this title, but the high boost clock ensures that the game’s primary thread is never starved, allowing the RTX 5090 to reach its measured frame rates.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is the dominant component in this pairing, equipped with 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 1.79 TB/s. The GPU’s boost clock of 2407 MHz and its 21760 shading units are the primary drivers of the measured FPS. The data shows that the GPU is heavily utilized, as frame rates scale significantly with resolution and settings changes.

At 1080p, the RTX 5090 delivers 157 FPS on Low settings, which drops to 70 FPS on High and 56 FPS on Ultra. This 64% reduction from Low to Ultra (157 FPS to 56 FPS) indicates that the GPU’s compute units are being saturated by the game’s higher-quality shaders and effects. The 32 GB VRAM is never a limiting factor, as the game’s maximum memory footprint is well below this capacity, allowing the GPU to cache textures and geometry without paging to system memory.

The GPU’s performance becomes more pronounced at 4K, where the RTX 5090 produces 104 FPS on Low, 65 FPS on Medium, and 47 FPS on High. The 4K Medium result of 65 FPS is particularly notable, as it shows the GPU’s ability to maintain playable frame rates at a resolution that typically cripples lesser hardware. The GPU’s 1.79 TB/s bandwidth is sufficient to feed the 512-bit bus at 4K, and the 104.8 TFLOPS FP32 performance handles the game’s complex lighting calculations. The RTX 5090’s benchmark scores, including a Passmark G3D score of 39650, place it in the 92nd percentile of all GPUs, and it outperforms the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB by 0.3% in average benchmark score (79842 vs. 79605).

The data suggests that the GPU is the bottleneck at all resolutions, as frame rates scale consistently with resolution changes. The 1080p to 4K drop at Medium settings is 33 FPS (98 FPS to 65 FPS), which is a 34% reduction, indicating that the GPU’s fill rate is the limiting factor. The RTX 5090’s 176 ROPs and 680 TMUs are pushed to their limits by the game’s post-processing effects, but the GPU’s large memory pool ensures that there are no texture pop-in or stutter issues.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 ranks 527th out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 18% of all configurations. This rank reflects the system’s strong performance, but it also indicates that there are many other combos that achieve higher frame rates, likely due to more aggressive GPU overclocks or higher-clocked desktop CPUs. The rank is determined by the measured FPS across all settings, and the data shows that this combo excels at lower resolutions but falls behind at 4K Ultra.

The 527th rank is slightly below what the individual component scores might suggest, given that the CPU and GPU both rank in the 92nd and 95th percentiles, respectively. This discrepancy can be attributed to the game’s optimization, which may not fully utilize the CPU’s 16 cores or the GPU’s 32 GB VRAM. The combo’s performance is more aligned with the GPU’s capabilities, as the RTX 5090’s 92nd percentile rank is a better predictor of in-game performance than the CPU’s 95th percentile rank.

In comparison to other combos, this system is likely to be outpaced by configurations with higher-clocked desktop GPUs, such as the RTX 5090’s desktop variant, which can sustain higher boost clocks. However, within the mobile segment, this combo is near the top, as the Ryzen 9 8945HX’s 5.40 GHz boost clock is among the highest available. The rank of 527 suggests that there are significant gains to be had by pairing this CPU with a more powerful GPU, but for the tested hardware, the performance is solid and consistent.

Resolution Scaling

The measured FPS data shows a clear scaling pattern from 1080p to 4K, with frame rates dropping by approximately 34% at Medium settings (98 FPS to 65 FPS) and 33% at High settings (70 FPS to 47 FPS). This scaling is typical of a GPU-limited scenario, where the rendering resolution directly impacts the pixel fill rate. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is less severe, with Medium settings falling from 98 FPS to 83 FPS (a 15% reduction), indicating that the GPU has sufficient headroom at 1440p.

The data also reveals that the scaling is not linear, as the jump from 1440p to 4K results in a larger percentage drop than the jump from 1080p to 1440p. At Medium settings, the 1440p to 4K drop is 18 FPS (83 FPS to 65 FPS), which is a 22% reduction, compared to the 15% reduction from 1080p to 1440p. This suggests that the GPU’s memory bandwidth and shading units are being taxed more heavily at 4K, where the higher resolution requires more texture fetches and pixel shading.

The resolution scaling at Ultra settings is more pronounced, with frame rates dropping from 56 FPS at 1080p to 47 FPS at 1440p (a 16% reduction) and then to 37 FPS at 4K (a 21% reduction from 1440p). This indicates that the Ultra preset’s additional effects, such as ray-traced shadows and reflections, are disproportionately expensive at higher resolutions. The Low preset shows the least scaling, with frame rates dropping from 157 FPS at 1080p to 132 FPS at 1440p (a 16% reduction) and then to 104 FPS at 4K (a 21% reduction from 1440p), suggesting that the GPU is less stressed when these effects are disabled.

The resolution scaling analysis confirms that the GPU is the limiting component, as the CPU’s performance is constant across resolutions. The 34% drop from 1080p to 4K at Medium settings is consistent with the GPU’s pixel processing capabilities, and the data indicates that players targeting 60 FPS should stick to 1440p at Medium or High settings, while 4K is only viable at Medium or Low settings.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a comprehensive view of the system’s performance across all settings and resolutions.

1920x1080:

• Low: 157 FPS average. This is the highest frame rate recorded, indicating that the GPU is not fully utilized when graphical effects are minimized.
• Medium: 98 FPS average, with a minimum of 84 FPS and a maximum of 113 FPS. This is the most balanced setting, providing a smooth experience with good visual quality.
• High: 70 FPS average. This is a 29% drop from Medium, showing the cost of higher-quality textures and shadows.
• Ultra: 56 FPS average. This is below the 60 FPS target, making it a poor choice for competitive play.

2560x1440:

• Low: 132 FPS average. This is a 16% drop from 1080p, showing the impact of increased resolution.
• Medium: 83 FPS average, with a minimum of 70 FPS and a maximum of 95 FPS. The 70 FPS minimum ensures smooth gameplay, even during intense scenes.
• High: 59 FPS average. This is a 29% drop from Medium, similar to the 1080p scaling.
• Ultra: 47 FPS average. This is below the 60 FPS target and is not recommended.

3840x2160:

• Low: 104 FPS average. This is a 34% drop from 1080p, showing the significant cost of 4K rendering.
• Medium: 65 FPS average, with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 75 FPS. The 55 FPS minimum is playable, but may cause minor stutters in crowded scenes.
• High: 47 FPS average. This is a 28% drop from Medium, making it too slow for a horror game that requires smooth camera movement.
• Ultra: 37 FPS average. This is the lowest score recorded, and it is unplayable for most users.

The data shows that the Medium preset is the only setting that consistently delivers frame rates above 60 FPS at 1440p and above 55 FPS at 4K. The Low preset is the only option for 4K at high frame rates, but it sacrifices the game’s visual atmosphere. The High and Ultra presets are best reserved for 1080p, where the GPU has more headroom to apply the game’s advanced effects.