The Medium

FAQ

Q: What is the overall performance ranking of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combo in The Medium?

A: This combination ranks 614th out of 2,911 tested combos in the database for The Medium, placing it in the top 21% of all systems tested for this title.

Q: How does the Ryzen 9 9900X3D compare to its nearest CPU rivals in average benchmark score?

A: The CPU scores 54,762 on average, which is 0.6% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (55,093), 1.3% ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54,053), 2% ahead of the Intel Xeon 6505P (53,701), and 2.1% ahead of the Intel Core i7-14700F (53,620).

Q: What is the best playable frame rate this combo achieves at 4K resolution?

A: At 3840x2160, the highest average frame rate is 99 FPS on Low settings. Medium settings deliver 62 FPS average (with a minimum of 53 and maximum of 71), while High yields 44 FPS and Ultra drops to 35 FPS.

Q: Does the RTX 4070 outperform or underperform relative to its nearest GPU rivals?

A: The RTX 4070's average benchmark score is 37,648, which is 0.1% ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P4 (37,628), 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37,507), 1.3% behind the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38,135), and 1.3% ahead of the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 (37,157).

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

A: At 1920x1080, Low settings produce 150 FPS average, while Ultra settings produce 53 FPS average. That's a 97 FPS gap, representing a 183% performance increase from Ultra to Low.

Q: How does this combo perform at 1440p Medium settings, which is a common gaming target?

A: At 2560x1440 with Medium settings, the combo delivers 79 FPS average, with a minimum of 67 FPS and a maximum of 91 FPS. This is a smooth experience for a horror game that emphasizes atmosphere over twitch reflexes.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC with 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die. This GPU has a base clock of 1920 MHz and a boost clock of 2475 MHz, with memory clocked at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). The memory subsystem consists of 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 504.2 GB/s.

In The Medium, this GPU's performance scales predictably with both resolution and settings. The data shows that the RTX 4070 is capable of driving 4K at playable frame rates, but only when settings are reduced. At 3840x2160, the GPU produces 44 FPS on High settings, which is below the 60 FPS threshold many players target. Dropping to Medium settings at 4K raises the average to 62 FPS, suggesting the GPU's 12 GB frame buffer and 504.2 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for Medium-quality textures and effects at this resolution.

The GPU's 29.15 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power and 46 RT cores are relevant for The Medium's horror presentation, which uses fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds that stress texture throughput and memory bandwidth more than raw geometry. The 184 TMUs and 64 ROPs help maintain fill rates, with the GPU posting a pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 455.4 GTexel/s. These specifications translate to the measured results: at 1440p, the RTX 4070 achieves 56 FPS on High and 45 FPS on Ultra, indicating that Ultra settings introduce significant overhead that this GPU cannot fully overcome at higher resolutions.

The GPU sits at the 81st percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 37,648. Its nearest rivals in the database — the Tesla P4, RX Vega 56, RTX 4080 Mobile, and Radeon PRO W6400 — all fall within 1.3% of its score, showing that the RTX 4070 occupies a tight competitive band. In The Medium specifically, the GPU's performance at 1080p is strong across all settings: 150 FPS on Low, 93 FPS on Medium, 67 FPS on High, and 53 FPS on Ultra. This suggests that at the most common esports and mainstream resolution, the RTX 4070 provides headroom for high-refresh-rate displays even with demanding settings.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core, 24-thread processor from the 9000 series, based on the Zen 5 architecture (Granite Ridge codename) and manufactured on a 4 nm process at TSMC. It has a base clock of 4.40 GHz and a boost clock of 5.50 GHz, with a TDP of 120 W. The cache hierarchy includes 80 KB of L1 per core, 1 MB of L2 per core, and a substantial 128 MB of L3 cache, which is critical for gaming workloads that benefit from large, fast data pools.

Memory support includes DDR5 with dual-channel configuration and a bandwidth of 89.6 GB/s, along with ECC support. The CPU communicates via PCIe Gen 5 with 24 lanes (CPU only), and it includes integrated Radeon Graphics, though the discrete RTX 4070 handles all rendering in this benchmark set.

In synthetic benchmarks, the 9900X3D delivers strong multi-threaded performance: Cinebench R23 multi-core score is 47,737, while the single-core score is 6,739. Geekbench results show 22,884 multi-core and 3,041 single-core. PassMark multi-thread score is 56,154, with single-thread at 4,646. These scores place the CPU at the 91st percentile among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 54,762.

The CPU's nearest rivals are the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF (score 55,093, delta -0.6%), Intel Core Ultra 5 245K (54,053, delta +1.3%), Intel Xeon 6505P (53,701, delta +2%), and Intel Core i7-14700F (53,620, delta +2.1%). This means the 9900X3D is essentially trading blows with these parts, sitting near the top of a tightly grouped cluster where less than 3% separates the best from the worst.

For The Medium, a game that relies on fixed camera angles and streaming of large texture sets, the CPU's 128 MB L3 cache is particularly beneficial for keeping frequently accessed assets close to the cores. The 12 cores and 24 threads ensure that any background tasks, such as asset decompression or audio processing, don't interfere with the main game thread. In this benchmark set, the CPU's role is more about maintaining consistent minimum frame rates than maximizing raw averages, since the game is heavily GPU-bound at higher settings. The measured data shows that at 1080p Low, where the CPU has more headroom, the combo achieves 150 FPS, indicating that the 9900X3D is not a bottleneck at this settings level.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data provides a clear picture of the optimal settings for this combo. At 1920x1080, Medium settings deliver 93 FPS average with a minimum of 79 FPS and maximum of 108 FPS. This is the sweet spot for mainstream monitors: it clears the 60 FPS threshold by a wide margin, maintains a minimum above 75 FPS for smooth gameplay, and leaves visual quality at a respectable level. High settings at 1080p drop to 67 FPS, which is still playable but with less headroom for scene complexity, while Ultra dips to 53 FPS, which may feel inconsistent in a horror title where pacing matters.

At 2560x1440, Medium settings are again the recommended choice, producing 79 FPS average with a 67 FPS minimum and 91 FPS maximum. This is a comfortable experience for a 1440p display, especially for a game like The Medium that doesn't require rapid, competitive reactions. High settings at 1440p yield 56 FPS, which is acceptable but risks dropping below 50 FPS in demanding scenes, while Ultra at 45 FPS is best avoided unless the player prioritizes visuals over smoothness.

At 3840x2160, the situation changes. Medium settings produce 62 FPS average with a 53 FPS minimum, which is borderline for comfortable play. Low settings jump to 99 FPS, offering a smooth 4K experience, but at a significant visual cost. High (44 FPS) and Ultra (35 FPS) are below the playable threshold for most users. For 4K owners, the best experience per the measured rows is Medium settings, which balances the 62 FPS average with a minimum above 50 FPS, or Low if frame rate consistency is the primary concern.

The overall recommendation is to use Medium settings across all resolutions. It provides the best combination of visual quality and frame rate stability, with minimums that stay well above the 30 FPS floor and averages that are either at or near the 60 FPS target.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 combination ranks 614th out of 2,911 tested combos in The Medium, placing it in the 79th percentile of all tested systems. This is a strong result for a pairing of a high-end desktop CPU with a mid-to-high-end GPU. The rank reflects that this combo outperforms 78.9% of all tested configurations, while trailing 21.1% that likely feature higher-tier GPUs such as the RTX 4080 or 4090, or more powerful CPU-GPU pairings.

The CPU's position relative to its rivals is competitive but not class-leading. The 9900X3D is 0.6% behind the Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF, which is a negligible margin in real-world gaming, and ahead of the Core Ultra 5 245K, Xeon 6505P, and Core i7-14700F by margins ranging from 1.3% to 2.1%. This means that in CPU-bound scenarios, this combo will perform nearly identically to systems using those rival CPUs, with the game's frame rates being more dependent on the GPU.

The GPU's rank is similarly tight: the RTX 4070 is within 1.3% of its four nearest rivals, meaning that swapping to a Tesla P4, RX Vega 56, RTX 4080 Mobile, or Radeon PRO W6400 would yield nearly identical average scores in synthetic benchmarks. However, in The Medium specifically, the RTX 4070's modern architecture and 12 GB of GDDR6X memory are better suited to the game's texture-heavy rendering than older or mobile parts, which contributes to the combo's strong overall rank.

The combo's 614th position out of 2,911 indicates that it sits comfortably in the upper-middle tier of gaming systems. For 1080p and 1440p gaming, this pairing is well above average, as evidenced by the measured frame rates exceeding 60 FPS on Medium settings at both resolutions. At 4K, it remains competitive but requires settings reductions to maintain playability, which is typical for this performance class.

Measured FPS Breakdown

3840x2160 (4K):

• Ultra: 35 FPS average. This is the lowest measured result for this combo, indicating that 4K Ultra is not viable for smooth play.
• High: 44 FPS average. Still below the 60 FPS target, but playable for users who tolerate lower frame rates.
• Medium: 62 FPS average, with a minimum of 53 FPS and maximum of 71 FPS. This is the only 4K setting that reaches the 60 FPS threshold on average, though the minimum can dip to 53 FPS.
• Low: 99 FPS average. This provides a smooth 4K experience, though visual quality is significantly reduced.

2560x1440 (1440p):

• Ultra: 45 FPS average. Below the 60 FPS target, making this setting marginal for most players.
• High: 56 FPS average. Close to 60 FPS but not consistently there, which may cause occasional stutter in demanding scenes.
• Medium: 79 FPS average, with a minimum of 67 FPS and maximum of 91 FPS. This delivers a comfortable experience with solid minimums.
• Low: 126 FPS average. This provides a high-refresh-rate experience at 1440p, suitable for fast-paced play.

1920x1080 (1080p):

• Ultra: 53 FPS average. Slightly below the 60 FPS target, though playable with some frame drops.
• High: 67 FPS average. Above the 60 FPS threshold, providing a smooth experience for most scenes.
• Medium: 93 FPS average, with a minimum of 79 FPS and maximum of 108 FPS. This is the recommended setting, offering a high frame rate with a strong minimum.
• Low: 150 FPS average. This is the highest measured result, ideal for 144Hz or higher refresh rate monitors.

The data shows a consistent pattern: Medium settings provide the best balance of frame rate and visual quality across all three resolutions. The gap between Low and Medium is substantial at every resolution (37 FPS at 4K, 47 FPS at 1440p, and 57 FPS at 1080p), while the gap between Medium and High is smaller (18 FPS at 4K, 23 FPS at 1440p, and 26 FPS at 1080p). The drop from High to Ultra is similarly consistent (9 FPS at 4K, 11 FPS at 1440p, and 14 FPS at 1080p), suggesting that Ultra settings add visual effects that cost roughly 20% performance compared to High.