The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 pairing delivers a highly playable experience in The Medium, but the data reveals a clear hierarchy where visual fidelity costs heavily. The benchmark results show that the Medium preset is the optimal balance of performance and quality, while the Ultra preset pushes the GPU to its limits at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data indicates that the Medium preset is the definitive sweet spot for this combination. At 1920x1080, Medium produces an average of 100 FPS with a minimum of 85 FPS and a maximum of 115 FPS, offering a smooth experience with a comfortable margin above the 60 FPS threshold. Moving to 2560x1440, Medium still holds strong at 84 FPS average (71 min, 97 max), demonstrating that this preset is viable for high-refresh-rate monitors at the mainstream resolution.

At 4K (3840x2160), the Medium preset drops to 66 FPS average (56 min, 76 max), which remains playable but shows the strain on the system. The High preset is the alternative for those prioritizing visuals, delivering 72 FPS at 1080p, 60 FPS at 1440p, and 47 FPS at 4K. However, the jump from Medium to High costs roughly 28% performance at 1080p (100 to 72 FPS) and 29% at 1440p (84 to 60 FPS), which is a substantial hit for marginal visual gains.

The Low preset offers the highest frame rates—160 FPS at 1080p, 135 FPS at 1440p, and 106 FPS at 4K—but this comes at the cost of the atmospheric detail that defines the horror genre. The Ultra preset is the most demanding, yielding 57 FPS at 1080p, 48 FPS at 1440p, and 38 FPS at 4K. These figures fall below the 60 FPS target at every resolution, making Ultra impractical for this hardware unless the user accepts sub-60 frame rates. Benchmark results indicate that Medium is the recommended preset, as it maintains 60+ FPS across all three tested resolutions while preserving enough fidelity for the game’s oppressive atmosphere.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is the primary determinant of performance in The Medium, as evidenced by the frame rate scaling across settings. The GPU features 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth. This memory configuration is sufficient for the game’s requirements, as the data shows no catastrophic frame rate collapses that would indicate VRAM capacity issues, even at 4K Ultra where the average drops to 38 FPS—a performance limitation rather than a memory failure.

The GPU’s clock speeds are notable: a base clock of 2325 MHz and a boost clock of 2512 MHz. These clocks, combined with the 6144 shading units and 80 ROPs, produce a pixel rate of 201.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 482.3 GTexel/s. The FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS provides the raw compute necessary for the game’s fixed-camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds, which are computationally expensive despite the game’s relatively static scenes. The 48 RT cores are present but the game’s implementation of ray tracing is not a factor in these measurements, as all rows represent standard rasterization.

The RTX 5070’s role becomes clearer when examining the delta between Low and Ultra settings. At 1080p, the difference between Low (160 FPS) and Ultra (57 FPS) is 103 FPS, indicating that the GPU is scaling its workload heavily with the preset. This behavior suggests that the card is fully utilized at Ultra settings, where it becomes the bottleneck. Conversely, at Low settings, the high frame rates (160 FPS at 1080p) suggest that the CPU is keeping pace adequately, but the GPU is still the primary driver of the final output. The card’s 82nd percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 40377 place it as a mid-to-high-tier performer, which aligns with its observed behavior in this title.

How This Combo Ranks

The combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 ranks 675th out of 3724 tested combos in The Medium. This places the pairing in the top 18% of all configurations, indicating a strong but not elite standing. The rank reflects the balanced nature of the setup—the CPU is a high-end 12-core, 24-thread processor with a 92nd percentile ranking among all CPUs, while the GPU sits at the 82nd percentile. This pairing achieves a combined position that benefits from the CPU’s headroom, which prevents it from bottlenecking the GPU in this title.

The CPU’s benchmark scores support this interpretation. The Ryzen 9 9900X scores 32172 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 2253 in single-core, with a Geekbench multi-core score of 22174 and single-core of 3010. These figures indicate a processor capable of feeding the RTX 5070 in The Medium, which is not particularly CPU-intensive due to its fixed-camera design. The combo’s rank of 675 suggests that while there are faster configurations, this pairing is well-matched for the game’s demands. The nearest CPU rivals—the AMD EPYC 9015 (0.1% slower), AMD EPYC 7313 (0.2% faster), Intel Core i9-14900 (1.1% faster), and Intel Xeon Platinum 8260M (1.4% faster)—show that the 9900X is competitive with these workstation-class chips, providing a solid foundation for the GPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured frame rates provide a complete picture of performance across all settings and resolutions. At 1920x1080, the results are as follows:

• Low: 160 FPS average
• Medium: 100 FPS average (85 min, 115 max)
• High: 72 FPS average
• Ultra: 57 FPS average

At 2560x1440, the performance scales predictably:

• Low: 135 FPS average
• Medium: 84 FPS average (71 min, 97 max)
• High: 60 FPS average
• Ultra: 48 FPS average

At 3840x2160, the GPU begins to show its limits:

• Low: 106 FPS average
• Medium: 66 FPS average (56 min, 76 max)
• High: 47 FPS average
• Ultra: 38 FPS average

The Medium preset is the only one with recorded minimum and maximum values, showing a consistent frame time distribution at each resolution. The minimum-to-average delta at 1080p is 15 FPS, at 1440p is 13 FPS, and at 4K is 10 FPS, indicating that the frame pacing becomes more stable as resolution increases, likely because the GPU is more consistently saturated. The 4K Ultra result of 38 FPS is the lowest recorded value, while the 1080p Low result of 160 FPS is the highest, demonstrating a 4.2x range in performance across the entire test matrix.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate degradation from 1080p to 4K reveals critical information about the limiting component. At the Low preset, the drop from 160 FPS at 1080p to 106 FPS at 4K represents a 33.75% reduction. At the Medium preset, the drop is from 100 FPS to 66 FPS, a 34% reduction. The High preset shows a steeper decline from 72 FPS to 47 FPS, a 34.7% reduction. The Ultra preset, however, shows a more dramatic drop from 57 FPS to 38 FPS, a 33.3% reduction.

These consistent reductions of roughly one-third across all presets indicate that the scaling is primarily GPU-bound. A CPU-bound scenario would show a smaller percentage drop at higher resolutions, as the CPU would be the bottleneck at 1080p and the GPU would catch up at 4K. Instead, the proportional scaling suggests that the RTX 5070 is the limiting factor throughout, with the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X providing sufficient headroom even at 1080p where the CPU is typically more stressed. The absolute numbers support this: at 1080p Low, the system achieves 160 FPS, which is high enough to saturate most displays, and the CPU’s 24 threads are more than adequate for a game that does not heavily utilize multi-core processing. The 4K results, particularly the 38 FPS at Ultra, confirm that the GPU’s 12 GB of VRAM and 672.0 GB/s bandwidth are the constraining factors at the highest fidelity settings.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset to use for a 60 FPS target at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset achieves 84 FPS average (71 min, 97 max) at 2560x1440, which is the only preset that exceeds 60 FPS while maintaining the minimum above 60. The High preset hits exactly 60 FPS average, but this leaves no margin for frame drops.

Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in this title?

A: At 4K, the Medium preset delivers 66 FPS average (56 min, 76 max), which is playable. The High preset drops to 47 FPS, and Ultra falls to 38 FPS, so 4K is only viable at Medium settings or lower for a smooth experience.

Q: How does the RTX 5070 compare to its nearest rivals in raw performance?

A: The GPU’s average benchmark score is 40377, placing it 0.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro 580, 0.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100, 1.2% behind the AMD Radeon Pro 5300, and 2% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile.

Q: Is the CPU or GPU the bottleneck in this game?

A: Benchmark results indicate the GPU is the limiting component. The frame rate drops consistently by approximately one-third from 1080p to 4K across all presets, which is characteristic of GPU-bound scaling. The Ryzen 9 9900X’s high benchmark scores (32172 in Cinebench R23 multi-core) suggest it is not the constraint.

Q: What is the performance difference between Low and Ultra settings at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves 160 FPS average, while Ultra achieves 57 FPS average. This represents a 103 FPS difference, or a 64.4% reduction in performance when moving from the lowest to the highest preset.

Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations?

A: The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 ranks 675th out of 3,724 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the top 18.1% of all configurations tested for this game.