The Medium

The Medium paired with the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Mobile produces a revealing dataset: a game released in early 2021 running on a 2025 high-end mobile platform, with frame rates that expose where this configuration sits among the 3724 hardware combinations tested in the database. The combo ranks 734th, placing it in the top fifth of tested pairings for this title, and the per-resolution data shows a configuration that is heavily GPU-bound at every tested resolution — a pattern that directly shapes which settings presets make sense. The analysis below walks through the ranking context, the GPU's role, scaling behavior, the CPU's contribution, and concrete settings recommendations drawn strictly from the measured rows.

How This Combo Ranks

Across 3724 tested combinations in The Medium, the Ryzen 9 8945HX plus RTX 5090 Mobile ranks 734th. That is a strong absolute placement — roughly the top fifth of all tested pairings — but it is worth unpacking what the rank actually reflects. The Medium is a horror title built around fixed camera angles, dual-reality rendering, and ray-traced-style lighting effects, and its engine tends to reward raw GPU throughput far more than CPU parallelism. A rank in the 700s therefore says less about the CPU in this pairing and more about the GPU's position in the overall performance hierarchy.

Looking at the component-level percentiles helps calibrate expectations. The RTX 5090 Mobile sits in the 84th percentile versus all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 45152. The Ryzen 9 8945HX is in the 95th percentile versus all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 76212. The CPU is, relatively speaking, the stronger of the two components in this pairing — yet the game's ranking is driven by GPU-limited frame rates, which is exactly what the resolution scaling data confirms. The combo's rank of 734 out of 3724 is consistent with a system where the graphics subsystem, while very capable, is the ceiling on performance in this specific title.

GPU Role

The RTX 5090 Mobile is a Blackwell 2.0 part built on TSMC's 5 nm process, with 45,600 million transistors packed into a 378 mm² die at a density of 120.6 million transistors per square millimetre. The core configuration is substantial for a mobile part: 10496 shading units, 328 texture mapping units, 112 render output units, 82 RT cores, and 328 tensor cores. Raw throughput figures include 31.80 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, a pixel rate of 169.7 GPixel/s, and a texture rate of 496.9 GTexel/s. Clocks run from a 990 MHz base to a 1515 MHz boost, with memory clocked at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective).

The memory subsystem is central to how this GPU handles The Medium. The card carries 24 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth. That is a large pool of very fast memory, and The Medium — a game that renders two overlapping worlds simultaneously in its signature dual-reality scenes — is exactly the kind of workload that consumes VRAM and bandwidth. The measured results suggest the bandwidth is being put to work: even at 3840x2160 with the Ultra preset, the GPU averages 37 FPS, which indicates the frame is completing rather than collapsing.

Against its nearest rivals by average score, the RTX 5090 Mobile's 45152 sits within a tight band: the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT averages 45384 (a 0.5% gap), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti averages 44795 (the 5090 Mobile leads by 0.8%), the Intel Arc A730M averages 45592 (1% ahead), and the NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation averages 45972 (1.8% ahead). In other words, this mobile GPU benchmarks in the same aggregate neighborhood as those parts, and The Medium's results should be read in that context: strong, but not at the very top of the chart. Its PassMark G3D score of 30034 and 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5871 back that positioning.

Resolution Scaling

The scaling data tells a consistent story. At the Low preset, average frame rates go 157 FPS at 1920x1080, 132 FPS at 2560x1440, and 104 FPS at 3840x2160. At Medium: 98, 83, and 65 FPS. At High: 70, 59, and 47 FPS. At Ultra: 56, 47, and 37 FPS, respectively.

Two patterns stand out. First, the drop from 1080p to 4K is remarkably shallow. Low preset frame rates fall by roughly a third when moving from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 — a fourfold increase in pixel count that costs only about a third of the frame rate. That is the signature of a GPU-bound configuration with substantial bandwidth headroom: the 896.0 GB/s of GDDR7 bandwidth and 112 ROPs keep pixel throughput from becoming the hard wall it would be on a narrower bus. When frame rates scale that gently with resolution, it means the GPU is comfortably absorbing the added pixel load.

Second, and more tellingly, the spread between presets at a fixed resolution is wider than the spread between resolutions at a fixed preset. At 1920x1080, the range runs from 157 FPS on Low down to 56 FPS on Ultra — nearly a threefold difference. Compare that to the resolution range at Ultra: 56 down to 37 FPS from 1080p to 4K. The Medium's quality presets cost more performance than its resolution steps do, which indicates the game's settings are loading effects and assets that stress the shader and lighting pipeline rather than pure fill rate. For a ranking perspective, this also explains why the combo ranks 734th: performance is capped by GPU-side effects load, not by a CPU bottleneck, since a CPU-limited configuration would show flat frame rates across resolutions and presets near the CPU's ceiling — and that is not the pattern here.

FAQ

Q: What FPS does this combo achieve in The Medium at 4K?

A: At 3840x2160 the measured averages are 104 FPS on Low, 65 FPS on Medium, 47 FPS on High, and 37 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset at 4K also carries measured frame-time bounds of a 55 FPS minimum and a 75 FPS maximum.

Q: How does the combo rank against other tested hardware pairings in this game?

A: It ranks 734th out of 3724 tested combinations, placing it in roughly the top fifth of tested pairings for The Medium.

Q: Is the CPU or the GPU the limiting factor in this game?

A: The data points to the GPU. Frame rates continue to scale meaningfully with both resolution and quality preset rather than plateauing at a fixed ceiling, which is the classic signature of a graphics-bound workload. The Ryzen 9 8945HX — 95th percentile among all CPUs — is not the constraint.

Q: How does the RTX 5090 Mobile compare to rival GPUs by aggregate benchmark score?

A: Its average score of 45152 places it within a narrow band: 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT (45384), 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (44795), 1% behind the Intel Arc A730M (45592), and 1.8% behind the NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation (45972).

Q: What are the measured 1080p results, and do they include minimum and maximum frame rates?

A: At 1920x1080: 157 FPS average on Low, 98 FPS on Medium (with a measured 84 FPS minimum and 113 FPS maximum), 70 FPS on High, and 56 FPS on Ultra. The Medium preset is the only tested configuration with recorded min/max bounds at that resolution.

Q: Is 24 GB of VRAM relevant for this game?

A: The Medium renders two simultaneous realities in its signature scenes, a workload that is demanding on memory. The RTX 5090 Mobile's 24 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus with 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth gives the game ample room, and the shallow resolution scaling in the measured data is consistent with a card that is not bandwidth-starved.

Measured FPS Breakdown

All rows below are measured results for the Ryzen 9 8945HX + RTX 5090 Mobile pairing in The Medium.

At 1920x1080:

• Low: 157 FPS average
• Medium: 98 FPS average, 84 FPS minimum, 113 FPS maximum
• High: 70 FPS average
• Ultra: 56 FPS average

At 2560x1440:

• Low: 132 FPS average
• Medium: 83 FPS average, 70 FPS minimum, 95 FPS maximum
• High: 59 FPS average
• Ultra: 47 FPS average

At 3840x2160:

• Low: 104 FPS average
• Medium: 65 FPS average, 55 FPS minimum, 75 FPS maximum
• High: 47 FPS average
• Ultra: 37 FPS average

The Medium preset rows are the only ones with recorded frame-rate bounds, and they are informative: at 1080p the spread is 84 to 113 FPS around a 98 FPS average, at 1440p it is 70 to 95 around 83, and at 4K it is 55 to 75 around 65. In each case the minimum sits roughly a seventh to a sixth below the average, indicating frame delivery is reasonably consistent rather than spiky. Notably, the 4K Medium minimum of 55 FPS is close to the 1080p Ultra average of 56 FPS — a useful equivalence for players deciding between crisper settings at lower resolution versus softer settings at higher resolution.

CPU Role

The Ryzen 9 8945HX is a Dragon Range part on the Zen 4 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm node with 13,140 million transistors across a 2x 71 mm² die configuration. It offers 16 cores and 32 threads, a 2.50 GHz base clock and a 5.40 GHz boost clock, a 55 W TDP, and an unlocked multiplier on the AMD Socket FL1 platform. Cache is generous: 64 KB of L1 and 1 MB of L2 per core, plus 64 MB of shared L3. Memory support is dual-channel DDR5 with 83.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and the platform provides PCIe Gen 5 with 28 CPU lanes. An integrated Radeon 610M handles display duties when the discrete GPU is idle.

In synthetic terms, this is a very fast mobile CPU. Cinebench R23 returns 42713 multi-core and 6030 single-core; Cinebench R20 returns 17939 and 2532; Cinebench R15 returns 4305 and 607. PassMark multithread scores 51405 with a single-thread figure of 3907. Against rivals, the 8945HX's average score of 76212 sits essentially level with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (76155, a 0.1% gap), a hair behind the AMD EPYC Embedded 8224P (76492, 0.4% ahead) and the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9945WX (76513, 0.4% ahead), and slightly ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (75779, 0.6% behind the 8945HX).

The relevance to The Medium is straightforward: none of that headroom is being used. The Medium is not a CPU-heavy title, and the measured data shows frame rates that scale with GPU load at every turn. The 8945HX's role in this pairing is to stay out of the way — which, with a 95th-percentile aggregate ranking among all CPUs, it does comfortably. The strong single-core figures (6030 in Cinebench R23, 3907 in PassMark single-thread) matter most for a game like this, where engine logic and draw-call submission run on a handful of threads, and both numbers indicate no CPU-side ceiling anywhere in the measured range.

Settings Recommendations

The measured rows support clear recommendations per resolution.

At 1920x1080, the Medium preset is the sweet spot: a 98 FPS average with a measured floor of 84 FPS and peaks to 113 FPS. That is fluid, consistent frame delivery. Players who want the visual ceiling can step to Ultra at 56 FPS or High at 70 FPS, but the Medium row is the only 1080p configuration with recorded min/max data, and its tight spread argues for it as the practical choice. Low at 157 FPS is available but largely unnecessary on this hardware.

At 2560x1440, Medium again delivers the best balance: 83 FPS average with a 70 FPS minimum and 95 FPS maximum. High drops to 59 FPS and Ultra to 47 — both playable, but the step down from Medium is steep relative to what it costs in frame rate. The Medium row's 70 FPS minimum at 1440p means even the worst measured moments stay above 60.

At 3840x2160, the calculus shifts. Medium averages 65 FPS with a 55 FPS minimum — still solid, and the recorded maximum of 75 FPS shows the upper bound. High at 47 FPS and Ultra at 37 FPS fall below comfortable thresholds for consistent motion, and Low at 104 FPS sacrifices too much of what makes the game's atmosphere work. Medium at 4K is the recommendation: the 55 FPS minimum is the lowest recorded figure in the Medium-preset set, but the 65 FPS average keeps the experience smooth for a slower-paced horror title.

Across all three resolutions the pattern holds: the Medium preset is where this combo delivers its most consistent frame delivery, and the recorded min/max data at that preset — the only rows with such bounds — confirms it is the best-characterized and best-behaved configuration in the dataset.