The Medium

The Medium presents a demanding load for the Intel Core i3-12100F and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT pairing, with measured frame rates showing significant sensitivity to both resolution and graphics presets. The data indicates this combination is capable of delivering high refresh rates at lower settings but struggles to maintain smooth performance at maximum visual fidelity, particularly at higher resolutions.

Resolution Scaling

The performance scaling across resolutions reveals a system that is heavily influenced by the graphics card's workload, yet the CPU's quad-core architecture still imposes a ceiling at lower resolutions. At 1080p, the average FPS ranges from 141.7 at Low settings to 54.9 at Ultra, demonstrating a wide operational window. When moving to 1440p, the Low preset drops to 124.4 FPS, a reduction of approximately 12%, while the Ultra preset falls to 43.5 FPS, a 21% decrease. This suggests that the GPU is becoming the primary bottleneck as resolution increases, but the gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low settings is smaller than expected, hinting that the processor is still a limiting factor at lower graphical loads.

The jump to 4K produces the most dramatic shifts. At 2160p, the Low setting yields 97.5 FPS, which is a 31% drop from the 1080p Low figure. This is a substantial decline, but the 4K Medium result of 63.8 FPS is only 34% lower than the 1440p Medium score of 79.8 FPS. The most telling data point is the Ultra preset at 4K, which delivers just 33.7 FPS, making the game effectively unplayable at maximum settings on a 4K display. The scaling pattern indicates that the RX 9070 XT, with its 16 GB of memory, has the capacity to handle the resolution, but the rendering load at Ultra settings is simply too heavy for the core architecture to maintain fluid motion. The data suggests that for this combo, 1440p represents the sweet spot where the CPU and GPU balance each other better, while 4K users will need to make significant compromises on visual quality.

FAQ

Q: What is the best resolution for this combo to maintain a 60 FPS average?

A: At 1080p High settings, the combo achieves 69.6 FPS average, and at 1440p Medium it reaches 79.8 FPS. For 4K, only the Low preset at 97.5 FPS exceeds the 60 FPS threshold, meaning users targeting higher resolutions must reduce settings to maintain that frame rate.

Q: How does the RX 9070 XT's memory configuration influence 4K performance?

A: The GPU is equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s. This memory capacity is sufficient for 4K textures, but the measured 4K Ultra average of 33.7 FPS shows that memory bandwidth alone cannot overcome the computational demands of the game's highest preset.

Q: Is the Intel Core i3-12100F a bottleneck for the RX 9070 XT?

A: The CPU has 4 cores and 8 threads with a boost clock of 4.30 GHz. The frame rate difference between 1080p Low (141.7 FPS) and 1440p Low (124.4 FPS) is only 17.3 FPS, which is a smaller gap than expected if the GPU were scaling perfectly, suggesting the processor's single-thread performance limits the maximum achievable frame rate at lower resolutions.

Q: What is the performance difference between the High and Ultra presets?

A: At 1080p, the High preset averages 69.6 FPS while Ultra drops to 54.9 FPS, a 21% reduction. At 1440p, the gap widens slightly, with High at 58.5 FPS and Ultra at 43.5 FPS, a 26% decrease. The Ultra preset also causes a significant drop at 4K, from 41.5 FPS on High to 33.7 FPS on Ultra.

Q: How does this combo rank compared to other tested configurations?

A: In The Medium, this specific CPU and GPU pairing ranks 432nd out of 1689 tested combos, placing it in the top 26% of all configurations benchmarked for this game.

Q: Does the data show any stability concerns with the RX 9070 XT?

A: The measured FPS data does not include minimum frame rate values, so stability cannot be directly assessed from the numbers provided. The average scores are all within a consistent range for each preset and resolution combination, but the lack of min FPS data prevents a conclusive statement on frame pacing.

How This Combo Ranks

The Intel Core i3-12100F and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT combination achieves a rank of 432 out of 1,689 total combos tested in The Medium, placing it in the 74th percentile of all configurations. This is a strong showing for a pairing that includes a relatively modest quad-core processor. The CPU itself sits in the 72nd percentile against all processors, with an average benchmark score of 13,516, while the GPU ranks in the 82nd percentile against all graphics cards with an average score of 39,647. The disparity between the CPU and GPU percentile rankings suggests the processor is the weaker link in this pairing, which is reflected in the game's scaling behavior.

When compared to its nearest rivals, the i3-12100F's average score is statistically indistinguishable from the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3975WX, which scores 13,534 and trails by just 0.1%. It is also closely matched with the Intel Core i7-1250U, which scores 13,462 and is ahead by 0.4%, and the Intel Core i3-10105, which scores 13,430 and is ahead by 0.6%. The larger gap is against the Intel Core i7-7700K, which scores 13,280 and is ahead by 1.8%. For the GPU, the RX 9070 XT's score of 39,647 is nearly identical to the AMD Radeon Pro 575 (39,703, trailing by 0.1%) and the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (39,568, ahead by 0.2%). The AMD Radeon Pro 575X scores 39,836 (trailing by 0.5%), and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 scores 39,879 (trailing by 0.6%). These tight margins indicate that slight variations in driver or system configuration could shift the rank by several positions.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data provides a complete picture of performance across three resolutions and four settings presets. At 1080p, the Low preset delivers an average of 141.7 FPS, which is the highest score achieved by this combo. The Medium preset averages 96.1 FPS, while High drops to 69.6 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1080p averages 54.9 FPS, which is still playable but marks a significant reduction from the lower settings. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 1080p represents a 61% performance penalty, illustrating the heavy cost of the game's highest visual features.

Moving to 1440p, the Low preset averages 124.4 FPS, which remains an excellent result for high-refresh-rate monitors. The Medium preset averages 79.8 FPS, and High drops to 58.5 FPS. The Ultra preset at 1440p averages 43.5 FPS, which is below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay. The relative performance drop from 1080p to 1440p is more pronounced at lower settings, with Low losing 12.2% of its frame rate while Ultra loses 20.8%, indicating that the GPU is becoming more saturated as resolution increases.

At 4K, the results are mixed. The Low preset averages 97.5 FPS, which is a surprisingly high score for 2160p and suggests the game scales well with reduced effects. The Medium preset averages 63.8 FPS, which is acceptable for most players. The High preset drops to 41.5 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages just 33.7 FPS. The gap between Medium and High at 4K is 22.3 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 7.8 FPS, suggesting that the Ultra preset's additional features are not the primary cause of the performance collapse. Instead, the data indicates that the GPU's raw compute power is the limiting factor at this resolution, as even the High preset struggles to maintain a consistent 40 FPS.

GPU Role

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT plays a central role in determining this combo's performance in The Medium. The GPU is built on the RDNA 4.0 architecture with a Navi 48 chip on a 4 nm process from TSMC, containing 53,900 million transistors on a 357 mm² die. Its base clock is 1660 MHz, with a boost clock of 2970 MHz and a game clock of 2400 MHz. The memory operates at 2518 MHz with 20.1 Gbps effective speed, providing 16 GB of GDDR6 across a 256-bit bus for a bandwidth of 644.6 GB/s. This configuration yields a pixel rate of 380.2 GPixel/s, a texture rate of 760.3 GTexel/s, and a FP32 throughput of 48.66 TFLOPS.

The GPU's 16 GB memory capacity is a critical asset for The Medium, as the game's high-resolution textures can consume significant VRAM. The measured results show that the GPU can handle the memory footprint at 4K, but the compute load limits performance. The 4K Low preset achieving 97.5 FPS shows that the memory bandwidth is not a bottleneck when effects are reduced. However, the 4K Ultra score of 33.7 FPS indicates that the 4096 shading units and 128 ROPs are overwhelmed by the game's full feature set. The RX 9070 XT's 64 RT cores are present for ray tracing workloads, but the benchmark data does not isolate this feature's impact. The GPU's TDP of 304 W and dual-slot design with two 8-pin power connectors suggest a high-power component, and the suggested PSU of 700 W reflects its consumption. The GPU's percentile rank of 82 versus the CPU's 72 percentile confirms that the graphics card is the more capable component in this pairing, and the FPS data corroborates that the CPU limits performance at lower resolutions while the GPU becomes the constraint at higher ones.