The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination delivers a broadly capable experience in The Medium, but the measured data shows that the game’s demands scale steeply with resolution and preset. This analysis covers the optimal settings, the roles of the GPU and CPU, and the exact performance figures recorded across the tested configurations.

Settings Recommendations

The measured frames-per-second data for this hardware pairing clearly indicates that the "Medium" preset provides the most balanced experience across all three tested resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers an average of 88 FPS, which is a significant 39.7% improvement over the High preset’s 63 FPS while remaining well above the 50 FPS floor seen at 4K Ultra. The trade-off is minimal compared to the jump from Low to Medium, where the average FPS drops from 141 to 88, a 37.6% reduction, but the visual quality gains are typically substantial for a horror title reliant on atmosphere.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset again stands out with an average of 74 FPS. This is a 28.4% increase over High’s 53 FPS and a 43.2% increase over Ultra’s 42 FPS. While the Low preset achieves 119 FPS, the Medium setting is the highest tier that maintains a smooth, console-like 60 FPS baseline, making it the recommended choice for players prioritizing a stable framerate without dropping to the lowest visual fidelity.

The hardest choice comes at 3840x2160, where the Medium preset yields an average of 58 FPS with a minimum of 50 and maximum of 67. This is the only 4K setting that keeps the average above the 60 FPS threshold, though it is right at the edge. The High preset drops to 42 FPS, and Ultra falls to a stuttering 33 FPS. Given the horror genre’s reliance on consistent pacing, the Medium preset at 4K is the only viable option for a playable experience, as the 58 FPS average is acceptable despite the occasional dip to 50 FPS. For users with high refresh rate displays at 1080p, the Low preset’s 141 FPS is the only setting that fully leverages such a panel, but for general use, Medium is the sweet spot for balancing quality and performance.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 is the primary driver of performance in The Medium, as evidenced by the steep FPS penalties incurred when raising quality settings. The GPU features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a memory bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s. This large frame buffer is likely a factor in handling the game’s high-resolution textures, but the benchmark data shows that raw compute power is the limiting factor at higher presets.

The GPU’s boost clock is 2520 MHz, with a game clock of 2070 MHz and a base clock of 1330 MHz. The architecture is RDNA 4.0 on a 4 nm process, with 3584 shading units and 56 ray accelerators. The FP32 throughput is 36.13 TFLOPS. In the measured data, moving from Low to Medium at 1080p reduces performance by 37.6% (from 141 to 88 FPS), while moving from Medium to High reduces it by a further 28.4% (from 88 to 63 FPS). This scaling indicates that the GPU is heavily loaded by the game’s rendering features, particularly at the High and Ultra presets.

The RX 9070’s average benchmark score is 23877, placing it at the 69th percentile among all GPUs. Its nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 6800S, scores 24063, which is 0.8% higher. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER scores 24170, 1.2% higher, while the GTX TITAN Z scores 23736, 0.6% lower. These comparisons suggest the RX 9070 is a mid-to-high-range part, and the The Medium results align with that positioning—it can handle 1080p and 1440p comfortably on Medium, but 4K Ultra is beyond its practical reach. The 16 GB VRAM is not the bottleneck; rather, the GPU’s shader and ray tracing performance dictates the framerate at higher settings.

Resolution Scaling

The performance drop from 1080p to 4K is severe, indicating that the RX 9070 becomes the limiting component at higher resolutions. At the Low preset, the average FPS falls from 141 at 1920x1080 to 119 at 2560x1440 and then to 93 at 3840x2160. This represents a 15.6% drop from 1080p to 1440p and a further 21.8% drop from 1440p to 4K, for a total reduction of 34.0% from 1080p to 4K. This scaling is relatively linear, suggesting that the GPU’s pixel throughput is the primary constraint.

At the Medium preset, the scaling is more aggressive. The average FPS is 88 at 1080p, 74 at 1440p, and 58 at 4K. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is 15.9%, and from 1440p to 4K is 21.6%, resulting in a 34.1% total reduction. The minimum FPS at Medium also scales from 75 at 1080p to 63 at 1440p and 50 at 4K, showing that the frame pacing degrades consistently with resolution.

The High and Ultra presets show even steeper declines. At High, the average FPS is 63 at 1080p, 53 at 1440p, and 42 at 4K—a 33.3% drop from 1080p to 4K. At Ultra, the average FPS falls from 50 at 1080p to 42 at 1440p and 33 at 4K, a 34.0% reduction. The consistency of these percentage drops across presets confirms that resolution scaling is uniform, and the limiting factor is purely the GPU’s rendering capability. The CPU’s role is minimal in this scaling, as the framerate drops are proportional to the pixel count increase, not to any CPU-side bottleneck.

Measured FPS Breakdown

This section details the exact average FPS figures recorded for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 combination in The Medium. The data is measured, not estimated.

At 1920x1080, the Low preset achieves an average of 141 FPS. The Medium preset records an average of 88 FPS, with a minimum of 75 and a maximum of 101. The High preset drops to an average of 63 FPS. The Ultra preset is the slowest at this resolution, with an average of 50 FPS.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset delivers an average of 119 FPS. The Medium preset averages 74 FPS, with a minimum of 63 and a maximum of 85. The High preset averages 53 FPS. The Ultra preset averages 42 FPS.

At 3840x2160, the Low preset yields an average of 93 FPS. The Medium preset averages 58 FPS, with a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 67. The High preset averages 42 FPS. The Ultra preset is the worst performer overall, with an average of just 33 FPS.

The data shows a clear hierarchy: Low > Medium > High > Ultra at every resolution. The gap between Medium and High is substantial, averaging around 20-25 FPS at 1080p and 1440p, and 16 FPS at 4K. The gap between High and Ultra is smaller, averaging around 10-13 FPS, indicating diminishing returns on the highest preset. The minimum FPS data, where available, shows that the Medium preset maintains a playable floor even at 4K, with a 50 FPS minimum.

FAQ

Q: What is the best preset for a smooth 60 FPS experience at 2560x1440?

A: The Medium preset is the only setting that achieves an average above 60 FPS at 2560x1440, with a measured average of 74 FPS and a minimum of 63 FPS. The High preset drops to 53 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target.

Q: Can this hardware run the game at 4K with high detail?

A: At 3840x2160, the High preset only reaches an average of 42 FPS, and the Ultra preset falls to 33 FPS. The Medium preset is the highest setting that stays reasonably close to 60 FPS, averaging 58 FPS with a 50 FPS minimum.

Q: How much faster is the Low preset compared to Ultra at 1080p?

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 141 FPS, while the Ultra preset averages 50 FPS. This means the Low preset is 182% faster than Ultra, a difference of 91 FPS.

Q: Does the 16 GB VRAM on the RX 9070 cause any performance issues?

A: The measured data shows no evidence of VRAM-related stuttering or frame drops. The performance scaling from Low to Ultra is consistent, and the minimum FPS values at Medium settings (75 at 1080p, 63 at 1440p, 50 at 4K) are stable, suggesting the 16 GB frame buffer is sufficient for this game.

Q: What is the performance difference between the RX 9070 and its closest rival, the RX 6800S?

A: In synthetic benchmarks, the RX 6800S has an average score of 24063, which is 0.8% higher than the RX 9070’s average score of 23877. This indicates they are near-identical in raw compute performance.

Q: Is the CPU a bottleneck at any resolution?

A: The benchmark data indicates the CPU is not a limiting factor. The FPS drops from 1080p to 4K are proportional to the pixel count increase (approximately 34% total reduction), which is characteristic of a GPU-bound scenario. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s high single-thread performance (Cinebench R23 single-core score of 6739) ensures it can feed the GPU adequately.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D serves as the supporting component in this pairing, and the data shows it does not constrain the GPU in The Medium. The CPU features 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture, with a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. It has a large 128 MB L3 cache, which is beneficial for gaming workloads that rely on data locality.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9900X3D scores 47737 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 6739 in single-core. Its average benchmark score is 54762, placing it at the 91st percentile among all CPUs. Compared to its nearest rivals, it is 0.6% slower than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (which scores 55093) and 1.3% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (which scores 54053). The data from The Medium shows that the CPU’s performance headroom is more than sufficient, as the framerate is entirely dictated by the GPU’s workload.

The game’s reliance on the GPU is evident from the resolution scaling. If the CPU were the bottleneck, the FPS would remain flat across resolutions. Instead, the average FPS drops by roughly one-third from 1080p to 4K at every preset, confirming the GPU is the limiting component. The 9900X3D’s high boost clock and large cache likely prevent any CPU-side hitches, but the measured minimum FPS values (e.g., 50 FPS at 4K Medium) are more indicative of GPU rendering time spikes than CPU thread saturation. For this title, the 9900X3D provides a stable platform, but its capabilities are not the primary factor in the final framerate.