The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D paired with the Intel Arc B570 presents a highly CPU-dominant configuration for The Medium, where the graphics card becomes the definitive bottleneck at every resolution. The benchmark data shows that this combo ranks in the 21st percentile overall (2321 out of 2911 tested combos), indicating that while the processor is exceptionally capable, the GPU severely limits the playability of this horror title. The measured results reveal a system that can handle the game at lower settings but struggles to maintain fluid frame rates at higher presets, making the experience heavily dependent on user compromise.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate collapse from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and tells a clear story about where the performance ceiling lies. At Low settings, the average FPS drops from 78 at 1920x1080 to 66 at 2560x1440, a reduction of 12 frames, and then falls further to 52 at 3840x2160. This progression from 1080p to 1440p represents a 15% decrease, while the jump to 4K from 1440p costs another 21% of performance. The scaling is consistent with a GPU-bound scenario, where each pixel increase directly taxes the Arc B570’s 10 GB of GDDR6 memory and 160-bit bus.

The Medium settings row shows even steeper declines between resolutions. At 1080p Medium, the combo achieves 49 FPS, dropping to 41 FPS at 1440p, and then plummeting to 32 FPS at 4K. That final transition from 1440p to 2160p represents a 22% loss, which is substantial given that the resolution increase is only 2.25 times the pixel count. The Ultra preset reveals the most punishing curve: 28 FPS at 1080p, 23 FPS at 1440p, and 18 FPS at 4K. The 4K Ultra result is essentially unplayable, indicating that the GPU’s 11.52 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is simply insufficient for this game’s heavy rendering load.

Interestingly, the High preset shows the least scaling efficiency. It starts at 35 FPS at 1080p, drops to 29 FPS at 1440p, and reaches 23 FPS at 4K. The 1080p to 1440p drop is 6 frames (17%), while 1440p to 4K costs another 6 frames (21%). This suggests that High settings introduce a specific rendering feature that disproportionately impacts higher resolutions, likely related to the game’s fixed camera angles and volumetric effects. The data indicates that the CPU is never the limiting factor here; the Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s 12 cores and 128 MB of L3 cache are more than sufficient to feed the GPU at all tested resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

The optimal balance between visual fidelity and playability lies at the Medium preset, but only at 1080p and 1440p. At 1920x1080 Medium, the combo delivers 49 FPS average with a minimum of 41 FPS, providing a smooth experience for a horror game that relies on atmosphere rather than twitch reflexes. The 1440p Medium setting produces 41 FPS average with 35 FPS minimum, which is borderline acceptable but may show stutter during intense scenes. For 4K users, the Low preset at 52 FPS average is the only viable option, though it sacrifices the game’s visual richness.

The High preset is not recommended at any resolution. At 1080p it yields only 35 FPS, which is barely playable, and the 1440p and 4K results of 29 and 23 FPS respectively fall below the threshold for smooth gameplay. The Ultra preset is entirely impractical, with 28 FPS at 1080p being the best case scenario. The data suggests that the jump from Medium to High costs roughly 14 FPS at 1080p (49 to 35), which is a 29% penalty for what is typically a modest visual upgrade. Meanwhile, the difference between Low and Medium at 1080p is 29 FPS (78 to 49), indicating that Medium provides significantly better visuals without the severe performance hit of High.

For users prioritizing frame rate, the Low preset at 1080p achieves 78 FPS, which is excellent for this title. The 1440p Low setting at 66 FPS is also strong. The measured frame time data for Medium settings shows a consistent spread: at 1080p the range is 41 to 56 FPS, at 1440p it is 35 to 47 FPS, and at 4K it is 27 to 37 FPS. This variance of roughly 15 FPS across all resolutions indicates that the GPU’s memory bandwidth of 380.0 GB/s is being taxed uniformly, with no resolution showing an anomalous spike in frame time consistency.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B570’s specifications directly explain the measured results. With 10 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 160-bit bus, the card is positioned as an entry-level enthusiast part, and its 65th percentile ranking among all GPUs confirms this. The 2500 MHz base and boost clock is modest, and the 80 ROPs and 144 TMUs provide a texture fill rate of 360.0 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 200.0 GPixel/s. These figures are adequate for 1080p gaming but become strained at higher resolutions where pixel throughput demands increase exponentially.

The GPU’s 18 ray tracing cores are present, but The Medium’s implementation of ray tracing is not heavily utilized in the benchmark rows provided. The measured FPS data shows no specific ray tracing test, suggesting that the game’s default rendering path is rasterization-focused. The 150 W TDP and 450 W suggested PSU are modest, but the PCIe 4.0 x8 interface could be a limiting factor for data transfer, especially at 4K where texture streaming demands more bandwidth. The 19.6 billion transistors on a 272 mm² die indicate a dense design, but the FP32 throughput of 11.52 TFLOPS is the key metric, and it is insufficient for 4K Ultra.

Compared to its nearest rivals, the Arc B570 shows performance parity with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.1) and Intel Arc A750 (deltaPct -0.1). This places it in a competitive position for 1080p gaming, but The Medium’s results suggest that the game is particularly demanding on memory bandwidth. The 380.0 GB/s bandwidth is the same as the Arc A750, but the B570’s 10 GB capacity is 2 GB less, which may cause texture swapping at 4K. The benchmark results for this combo show that at 4K Ultra, the system achieves only 18 FPS, which is a 36% drop from 4K Medium’s 32 FPS, indicating that the VRAM capacity is being exceeded at the highest settings.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo rank of 2321 out of 2911 tested combos places this pairing in the bottom 20% of all configurations tested for The Medium. This is a poor result for a CPU that ranks in the 91st percentile among all processors. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s average benchmark score of 54762 is within 0.6% of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (55093) and 1.3% above the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54053), showing that the CPU is not the weak link. The GPU’s 65th percentile ranking, however, drags the overall combo performance down significantly.

The data reveals a massive mismatch between the CPU and GPU capabilities. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s 3DMark max threads score of 13795 and Cinebench R23 multicore score of 47737 are top-tier numbers, but they are irrelevant when the GPU cannot translate that processing power into frame rates. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (78 FPS) is the only result that approaches what one might expect from a high-end CPU paired with a mid-range GPU. At 4K Ultra, the 18 FPS result is 4.3 times lower than the 1080p Low score, highlighting the GPU’s inability to scale.

When compared to other combos in the database, this pairing is likely to be outperformed by systems using the same CPU with a higher-end GPU, or even a lower-tier CPU with a better GPU. The 2911 total combos include a wide range of hardware, and a rank of 2321 suggests that the Arc B570 is the primary constraint. Users with this specific combo should be aware that upgrading the GPU would yield substantial performance gains in The Medium, while upgrading the CPU would provide almost no benefit in this title.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution and setting combination for this system?

A: The 1920x1080 Medium preset provides the best balance with 49 FPS average, while 2560x1440 Low achieves 66 FPS for smoother gameplay. For 4K, only Low settings are viable at 52 FPS.

Q: Why is the 4K Ultra performance so poor?

A: The 4K Ultra result is 18 FPS, which is a 44% drop from 4K Medium’s 32 FPS. This indicates that the Intel Arc B570’s 10 GB VRAM is insufficient for the game’s highest texture quality at 2160p.

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

A: The data clearly shows the GPU is the bottleneck. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D ranks in the 91st percentile among CPUs, while the Arc B570 ranks in the 65th percentile, and the measured frame rates scale directly with resolution changes.

Q: How does this combo compare to other tested configurations?

A: This combo ranks 2321 out of 2911 tested combos, placing it in the bottom 20%. The GPU’s performance is comparable to the Intel Arc A750 (deltaPct -0.1) and NVIDIA RTX 3070 Mobile (deltaPct 0.1).

Q: Can this system run the game at 1440p with playable frame rates?

A: Yes, at 1440p Low the system achieves 66 FPS, and at Medium it reaches 41 FPS. However, High settings at 1440p only produce 29 FPS, which is not recommended for smooth gameplay.

Q: What is the frame time consistency at Medium settings?

A: At 1080p Medium, the range is 41 to 56 FPS; at 1440p Medium, it is 35 to 47 FPS; and at 4K Medium, it is 27 to 37 FPS. The consistent 15 FPS spread suggests stable GPU behavior across resolutions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The complete frame rate data for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D with Intel Arc B570 in The Medium is as follows:

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Low: 78 FPS average
• Medium: 49 FPS average, 41 FPS minimum, 56 FPS maximum
• High: 35 FPS average
• Ultra: 28 FPS average

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Low: 66 FPS average
• Medium: 41 FPS average, 35 FPS minimum, 47 FPS maximum
• High: 29 FPS average
• Ultra: 23 FPS average

3840x2160 (4K):

• Low: 52 FPS average
• Medium: 32 FPS average, 27 FPS minimum, 37 FPS maximum
• High: 23 FPS average
• Ultra: 18 FPS average

The data shows a clear hierarchy: Low settings are the only preset that maintains playable frame rates across all resolutions, with 4K Low at 52 FPS being the minimum acceptable result. Medium settings are playable at 1080p and 1440p but drop below 40 FPS at 4K. High and Ultra settings are not recommended for any resolution above 1080p, and even at 1080p, they fail to reach 60 FPS. The minimum FPS values for Medium settings show that the frame rate floor is consistent at roughly 70% of the average, indicating no sudden spikes or stutters in the rendering pipeline.

The transition from Low to Medium at each resolution costs approximately 29 FPS at 1080p, 25 FPS at 1440p, and 20 FPS at 4K, showing that the performance penalty of higher settings decreases as resolution increases. This is counterintuitive but suggests that at 4K, the GPU is already so overloaded that additional settings have a proportionally smaller impact. The jump from Medium to High is more severe, costing 14 FPS at 1080p, 12 FPS at 1440p, and 9 FPS at 4K. The High to Ultra transition is the smallest, at 7 FPS at 1080p, 6 FPS at 1440p, and 5 FPS at 4K, implying that Ultra settings are not dramatically more demanding than High.

These measured results highlight that the Arc B570’s 10 GB memory is the critical constraint. The 4K Ultra result of 18 FPS is exactly one-third of the 1080p Low result of 78 FPS, which aligns with the 4x pixel increase from 1080p to 2160p. This linear scaling suggests that the GPU is operating at its memory bandwidth limit, and no amount of CPU headroom from the Ryzen 9 9900X3D can overcome this hardware ceiling. Users seeking higher performance in The Medium would need to either lower their resolution to 1080p, accept Low settings at 1440p, or consider a GPU with more memory and bandwidth.