The Medium

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 delivers a playable but demanding experience in The Medium, with performance heavily dictated by the graphics preset selected. The data shows a clear trade-off between visual fidelity and frame rate, making the choice of settings the single most impactful decision for this configuration.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS rows reveal that the Medium preset offers the most balanced experience across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, the Medium preset produces an average of 77 FPS, which is 22 FPS higher than the High preset’s 55 FPS, while the jump from Low to Medium costs 46 FPS (123 to 77). This indicates that Medium is the sweet spot for maintaining fluid motion without sacrificing the game’s atmospheric detail. At 2560x1440, Medium yields 65 FPS, comfortably above the 46 FPS of High, and at 3840x2160, it manages 51 FPS, which remains playable while High falls to 36 FPS.

The Ultra preset is not recommended for this combo. It produces 44 FPS at 1080p, 37 FPS at 1440p, and 29 FPS at 4K, all of which fall below the 60 FPS threshold that many consider the baseline for smooth gameplay. The Low preset, while delivering the highest frame rates (123 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, 81 FPS at 4K), likely strips away too much of the game’s visual identity to be a worthwhile compromise. Consequently, the data strongly suggests that Medium is the optimal preset, offering the best frame rate per unit of visual quality across the board.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 is the primary factor limiting performance in The Medium, as evidenced by the frame rate differentials across settings. The GPU’s 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is sufficient for the game’s textures at Medium settings but begins to strain at higher presets. The RTX 3070’s boost clock of 1725 MHz and base clock of 1500 MHz, combined with its 5888 shading units and 96 ROPs, deliver a pixel rate of 165.6 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 317.4 GTexel/s. These specifications explain why the card can handle 1080p Medium at 77 FPS but drops to 44 FPS at Ultra, as the increased shading and texture demands outpace the GPU’s throughput.

The GPU’s 61st percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 17208, which is only 0.7% above the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, place it in the mid-range tier. In The Medium, this translates to a card that is capable of 60 FPS at 1080p only on Medium or lower settings, and 60 FPS at 1440p is unattainable on any preset. The 4K results are particularly telling: even at Low settings, the RTX 3070 only reaches 81 FPS, and at Ultra it drops to 29 FPS, confirming that the GPU’s compute resources are the bottleneck for this title, not the CPU.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is steep and consistent across all presets, reinforcing that the RTX 3070 is the limiting component. At Medium settings, the average frame rate falls from 77 FPS at 1080p to 65 FPS at 1440p (a 12 FPS drop) and then to 51 FPS at 4K (a 14 FPS drop from 1440p). This scaling pattern indicates that the GPU’s pixel throughput is the constraining factor, as the number of pixels increases by 2.25x from 1080p to 1440p and by 4x from 1080p to 4K.

The Low preset shows a similar trend: 123 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, and 81 FPS at 4K. The High preset drops from 55 FPS at 1080p to 46 FPS at 1440p and 36 FPS at 4K. The Ultra preset is the most affected, falling from 44 FPS at 1080p to 37 FPS at 1440p and 29 FPS at 4K. These numbers demonstrate that while the CPU’s performance remains constant, the GPU’s workload scales directly with resolution, making 4K gaming impractical for this combo on anything above Low settings. The 1080p to 1440p transition is more manageable, preserving playability on Medium, but the 4K step is where the RTX 3070’s 8 GB VRAM and 448 GB/s bandwidth become insufficient.

How This Combo Ranks

This specific combination of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ranks 1194 out of 2911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 59th percentile of all configurations. This ranking reflects the fact that the CPU is a top-tier part while the GPU is mid-range, creating an imbalanced system where the processor’s potential is not fully utilized. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D sits in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54762, which is only 0.6% below the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF and 1.3% above the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K. In contrast, the RTX 3070’s 61st percentile ranking and average score of 17208 place it well below the average of the other components in this combo.

The 1194th rank out of 2911 combos indicates that this pairing is not optimized for The Medium, as many other configurations with more balanced CPU-GPU pairings will outperform it. The data suggests that the CPU is not the bottleneck; rather, the GPU’s performance ceiling prevents the system from achieving higher frame rates. This is corroborated by the fact that the RTX 3070’s nearest rivals, such as the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (0.7% higher score) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (1% higher score), produce similar results, meaning the combo’s rank is driven almost entirely by the GPU tier.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best settings preset for this CPU-GPU combo in The Medium?*

A: The Medium preset is the best choice, as it delivers 77 FPS at 1080p, 65 FPS at 1440p, and 51 FPS at 4K, which are the highest frame rates that remain above 30 FPS at all resolutions while maintaining acceptable visual quality.

*Q: Can this combo achieve 60 FPS at 1440p in The Medium?*

A: No, the data shows that the maximum average FPS at 2560x1440 is 104 FPS on Low settings, but the Medium preset yields 65 FPS, High yields 46 FPS, and Ultra yields 37 FPS. None of the presets achieve a stable 60 FPS at 1440p except Low, which exceeds it.

Q: How does the RTX 3070 compare to its nearest rivals in terms of average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 3070’s average benchmark score is 17208, which is 0.7% lower than the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17083), 1% lower than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17037), and 1.5% higher than the NVIDIA Tesla K40c (17468). This places it roughly on par with these mid-range cards.

Q: Is the Ryzen 9 9900X3D a bottleneck for the RTX 3070 in this game?

A: The CPU’s 91st percentile ranking and high benchmark scores (e.g., 47737 in Cinebench R23 multicore, 6739 in single-core) indicate it is not a bottleneck. The frame rate drops across resolutions are consistent with GPU limitations, not CPU performance.

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

A: At 1920x1080, the Low preset averages 123 FPS while Ultra averages 44 FPS, resulting in a 79 FPS difference. This demonstrates the significant performance cost of the Ultra preset’s graphical enhancements.

*Q: Does the combo’s rank in The Medium reflect its overall hardware quality?*

A: The combo ranks 1194 out of 2911, which is below the 50th percentile. This is due to the GPU’s mid-range standing (61st percentile) relative to the CPU’s top-tier standing (91st percentile), creating a performance imbalance that limits the system’s overall capability.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values show a clear progression by settings. The Low preset delivers the highest average at 123 FPS. The Medium preset produces 77 FPS, with a minimum of 65 FPS and a maximum of 88 FPS, indicating some frame variance but generally smooth performance. High settings drop to 55 FPS, and Ultra falls to 44 FPS. This 1080p data shows that the RTX 3070 is capable of high frame rates on lower presets but struggles to maintain 60 FPS on High or Ultra.

At 2560x1440, the Low preset yields 104 FPS, which is still very playable. Medium settings produce 65 FPS, with a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 74 FPS, meaning the frame rate occasionally dips below the 60 FPS threshold but remains acceptable. High settings average 46 FPS, and Ultra averages 37 FPS, making these presets less suitable for smooth gameplay. The 1440p results indicate that Medium is the highest preset that keeps the average FPS above 60.

At 3840x2160, performance degrades significantly. The Low preset achieves 81 FPS, which is surprisingly high for 4K, but Medium drops to 51 FPS, with a minimum of 43 FPS and a maximum of 58 FPS, showing noticeable frame dips. High settings average 36 FPS, and Ultra averages 29 FPS, making both presets largely unplayable for a smooth experience. The 4K data confirms that only the Low preset offers a consistently fluid frame rate at this resolution, while Medium is marginal.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D’s role in The Medium is to provide ample headroom so that the GPU remains the sole performance limiter. With 12 cores and 24 threads based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge), the CPU operates at a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz. Its large 128 MB L3 cache and 1 MB L2 cache per core help maintain high memory throughput, which is beneficial for the game’s streaming assets. The CPU’s benchmark results, such as a single-thread score of 6739 in Cinebench R23 and a multi-thread score of 47737, place it in the 91st percentile of all CPUs, showing that it is more than capable of feeding the RTX 3070.

The 9900X3D’s nearest rivals in CPU benchmarks include the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, which scores 0.6% higher, and the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K, which scores 1.3% lower. This indicates that the CPU’s performance is competitive with other high-end desktop processors. In The Medium, the CPU’s 24 threads are unlikely to be fully utilized, but the high single-core performance ensures that the game’s main thread does not become a bottleneck. The data shows that frame rates scale with resolution and settings in a manner consistent with GPU-bound performance, confirming that the CPU’s role is to support, not constrain, the RTX 3070. The 120W TDP and DDR5 memory support further ensure that the platform can sustain the CPU’s performance without thermal or bandwidth limitations affecting the game.